Yesterday was actual Stonewall Day, honoring the riots at the Stonewall Inn on that date in 1969 and serving as a flashpoint for Gay Pride events and political organizations — and, increasingly over the years, providing a hook for all manner of LGBT-oriented commerce (products for sale, advertising for those products) and feel-good publicity for companies and organizations of all sorts. On darker days, I get the feeling that queerfolk are just being used: rainbow everything, whether or not it has some plausible connection to gender or sexuality. I am myself far from immune to the allure of random rainbow objects.
Some items of apparel, however, are naturals for the rainbow treatment — for gay men, items worn in male athletic activities or associated with male sexual bodyparts (or in the case of jockstraps, both).
As it happens, athletic / running / fitness / exercise / gym shorts are a long-standing item in my clothes drawers: worn for doing exercises at the Y (when I could still manage that), as everyday indoor wear at home, and during the summer as comfortable outdoor wear as well. I’ve been accustomed to using gray cotton shorts (comfortable and cheap, also unremarkable), like these from ROMWE.com:
But there are more interesting options.




