Archive for the ‘Clothing’ Category

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zhuzh it up!

November 25, 2021


(#1) Available as a sticker from Redbubble, also as a t-shirt

Enter Monica Macaulay (in Wisconsin), who posted this ad for seasoning packets from Uncommon Goods on Facebook yesterday, with her innocent comment:



(#2 & 3) Monica: “zhuzh it up! apparently a well-known expression”

Well, yes, well-known in some circles (dictionary resources, in considerable detail, to come below). It was popularized earlier in this century in the US by the tv program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; but then back in the 1960s and 70s in the UK by the BBC radio program(me) Round the Horne, with high-camp characters who made much use of a secret lexicon called Polari.

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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Gender and sexuality, Masculinity, Slang | Leave a Comment »

Helgi Narcissus (again)

November 18, 2021

(Attractive men modeling underwear, some of them contemplating their genital packages. But nothing raunchy.)

Yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad with the model I’ve called Helgi in Helsinki Athletica Kasper long johns, contemplating his own handsome body:


(#1) Helgi4, following three previous DJ photos of this model set in a trendy bathing room; like Helgi2 and 3, modeling long johns, this time in an off-white with just the slightest touch of pink (a shade DJ calls Dusty Pink); like Helgi1, casting his gaze downward to admire, Narcissus-like, the weighty excellence of his own genital package, but now sliding his right hand down his firm belly under the waistband of his underwear (man’s got a hand in his pants)

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Posted in Gaze, Gesture, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Cruising in his long johns, take 2

November 16, 2021

(Men in various states of undress, visibly tumescent while minimally clothed, looking for sex with other men — so not for everyone.)

Yesterday’s mail ad from Daily Jocks, a carefully composed, even elegant, presentation of a muscular young man posing in fashionable form-fitting long johns that highlight his weighty package, while he fixes us with an intense gaze that gay men use in cruising for sex with other men (in another context, it’s the intense, fixed smoulder that straight men use in trolling for sex with women):


(#1) Call him Helgi (it’s Scandinavian and heroic); he’s posing in the trendy bathing room from two other recent appearances of his — on 11/12 in a much cruder pose but still in Helsinki Athletica long johns; and then on 11/3 in very brief white DJX Signature briefs, apparently contemplating the excellent penis contained within

I’ll revisit those two appearances (with notes on the sociosexual worlds of gay men) and then turn to the English garment lexicon, focusing on long johns, tights, leggings, and the union suit.

But first, a bit more about the presentation of Helgi in #1.

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Posted in Art, Books, Clothing, Etymology, Facial expression, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Male art, Photography, Underwear | 1 Comment »

The long johns, the erection, and the cruise face

November 12, 2021

(Significant mentions of erections, plus a photo of a barely covered one, displayed with carnal intent — so not to everyone’s taste.)

This morning’s ad from Daily Jocks offers extremely form-fitting long johns from Helsinki Athletica, modeled in such a calculatedly raunchy way that I broke out in helpless laughter.

The ad copy for the garment (illustration under the fold):

SPECIAL PURCHASE: 40% OFF LONG JOHNS

The Helsinki Athletica Long Johns [AZ: note Ad-Copy Capitalization] are made from premium modal [AZ: modal fabric is made by spinning beech bark cellulose] which forms to your skin with ultimate comfort, whilst showing off your best assets. [AZ: If you got ’em, flaunt ’em!]

These Long Johns are only available for 1 week per year! [AZ: I’m not sure we could survive an extended display of them.]

USD $19 | AUD $27 [The DJ company is in Oz.]

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Masculinity, Phallicity, Underwear | 4 Comments »

Dirty words and dirty briefs

November 11, 2021

(Yes, as the title should tell you, this posting is not for kids or the sexually modest. It would be entirely unacceptable to Facebook, which is why I don’t link to it on Facebook, but merely tell my readers there where on my blog — this blog — they can find this posting.)

Originally this was supposed to be one of my brief postings, or briefs, in this case about some dirty talk; but then the idea of dirty briefs led me on in further directions in the garment world: to men’s briefs with dirty talk on them, and to wordless underwear that is dirty with the effluvia of the wearer’s body. It’s all one big tangle of senses of dirty and senses of brief. (However: no legal briefs were soiled, or even touched (upon), in the preparation of this posting.)

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Posted in Ambiguity, Taboo language and slurs, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Briefs: Greg’s new shoes

November 7, 2021

This morning Greg Parkinson announced on Facebook that, needing comfy house shoes, he’d gotten these:

(#1)

There’s a song for that:

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Posted in Clothing, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Parody, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

“I want to suck your socks off”

November 5, 2021

(The title alone should be enough to signal that this posting is totally inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest, as are three others to follow it. But a lot of this material is stunningly raunchy and also personal, so I’m issuing an especially strong warning. Two of the following postings merit a warning about heavy linguistics as well — phonology in one, syntax and semantics in the other, but even they are fugues on the vocabulary of fellatio, so men’s genitals and sex between men will be with us all the way through.)

Not a morning name exactly, but a quotation I woke up to a couple of days ago, a quotation bringing with it the recollection of an encounter from 40-some years ago that was so intensely pleasurable that I came to consciousness smiling and chuckling, with morning wood just a stroke short of a happy ending.

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Posted in Clothing, Facial expressions | 2 Comments »

An address to his penis

November 3, 2021

(A homoerotic pose, with companion poetry set in the world of gay desire. Nothing explicit, but, yeah …)

A Daily Jocks ad for its new Signature line of underwear captures a handsome young man in his white high-rise Signature briefs focused intently on the solidly packed pouch of those briefs and apostrophizing the magnificent penis within:

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Posted in Language and the body, Parody, Poetry, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Two faces

October 17, 2021

(men’s bodies, references to sex between men, so inadvisable for kids and the sexually modest)

From ads in my e-mail recently, these two male faces, with (lots of) context removed:

(#1)

(#2)

The question is how we read these faces, what we see in them, and that turns out to be an enormous question, in part because our responses are a compound of  many different kinds of judgments, all of which are complex and variable in themselves.

The faces are not without context. They are, to start with, faces in poses (these faces are in static photos; if we had them in motion, there would be even more information to cope with).

Suppose we got them in a neutral pose, facing the camera. What we’d be looking at then would be a compound of a basic face overlaid by a facial expression, and we’re accustomed to assigning an interpretation to both of these things. And these interpretations are essentially never unique.

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Posted in Facial expression and gesture, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Converse all-stars

October 13, 2021

The story starts with an instance of semantically reversed impervious (to) — a converse use of a predicate adjective. From Anat Shenker-Osorio, the founder of ASO Communications, interviewed on 10/11 on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. From the transcript:

… What we find in experiment after experiment is that when people have already cemented a world view, they in essence have a frame around what is occurring, then facts are simply impervious to it. They bounce off of it, right?

… And so it`s precisely as you said. If they have an existing story line about, quote, unquote, what Democrats do and how they behave, then facts are pretty much impervious to it.

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Posted in Actors, Argument structure, Clothing, Lexical semantics, Movies and tv, Names, Participant roles, Semantics, Syntax | Leave a Comment »

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