I'm Definitely Not Wearing My Underwear

WARNING: References to genitalia, buttocks, and undegarments follow

What does it mean if your wife buys you women's underwear? What does it mean if you wear this underwear, and it fits better than the underwear you normally wear? I think I am wearing women's underwear. I hadn't noticed before, but a pair of boxers* Cyndi bought me is very different from the underwear I normally wear. They are cut differently from my verifiable men's boxers; they are a soft flannel, they have a fake fly. They are sized differently than my traditional men's underwear. They flare at the hips and fit snugger in the crotch. Even with that they feel fine. In fact in warmer weather, when things are sweatier, these offer a nice support and absorption that I didn't know I was missing. They are a nice middle ground between the floppy boxers I usually wear and the boxer brief style Klingons I saved for playing soccer. I only recently noticed the bright pink label and started connecting the dots. So I'm cross dressing.

Unless they're really men's underwear trying to unnaturally be women's underwear. Maybe it is only possible for boxers to be for men and the designer of these is trying to subvert the natural essence of boxers by offering them to women. It's really the women who might wear these that are doing something unnatural. Or maybe they're just underwear and it doesn't matter who wears them as long as they are worn.

So I have to ask Cyndi where she got these boxers. It may be that they were in the men's underwear section but I don't know if that mitigates the apparent design. Given the physical features and the cultural implications of a pink tag, it seems these boxers were designed by their creator for women. But then I fit into these boxers better than I fit into some boxers that were unmistakably designed for men. Then again the packaging of those men's boxers can just as easily, or even more sensibly, be said to be targeting women; whereas the packaging of the lady gift boxers didn't have the romance novel cover look. So even if Cyndi reveals that these were bought in a "men's department," I'm still back where I started: wearing ambiguous underwear.



Gender Neutral Playlist?
Don't Pick It Up- The Offspring
She Came In Through The Bathroom Window-The Beatles
Please Me Like You Want To- Ben Harper
Time On My Hands- San Getz
Zero- Smashing Pumpkins
Cold Lampin' With Flavor- Public Enemy
Fell In Love With a Girl- The White Stripes
Rock Is Dead- Marilyn Manson
Ride The Wild-Descendants
I Wanna Be Your Lover- Prince
Peace Through Power- TSOL
Mack The Knife- Bobby Darin
But Not For Me- Sarah Vaughan
This Fire- Franz Ferdinand
Good Vibrations- The Beach Boys

* I've always thought designating pants, shorts, and underwear as a pair of anything was weird. But it turns out at one time pants did come in pairs, one for each leg fastened together by a cinch, belt or some other contraption, like chaps. Now, we tend to not buy pants like that though some are still made that way. Pants are the leg covering, so as long as you are covering two legs separately (unlike the way a skirt or dress would) you have a pair of pants. So that's why coolots is a plural word too. And since a thong covers almost nothing, well it covers something but it certainly does not cover the legs, it is a single thong that flosses the perineum, ergo it is a thong and not a pair of thongs.

But in English English pants means panties- the undergarments- and trousers refers to American English pants. While some underpants do cover portions of the leg- like my women's boxers for example, others do not- like bikini cut briefs.Past the crease of the pelvis is not a part of the leg. It is the pelvis, and before you say the buttocks are parts of the leg note that the buttocks end where the legs begin. So even though buttocks and legs may be joined together as are the US and Mexico by some NAFTAesque description of the body, they are nonetheless separated by the friendly horizontal gluteal crease. And, undergarments like bikini briefs can be made from a single tube rather than two pants joined together. It is a single pelvis being covered by a single article of clothing. Though I guess we could say the pair of buttocks are covered by a pair of underwear and still consistently maintain that a single thong covers something but not a pair of anything... I think. Yes, any pair of something that a thong may cover can be described by a singular noun without a plural qualifier like "pair."

The point being that a pair of pants, though we may not immediately recognize it, is essentially two things purposed with covering two things but by good luck covers more. So they are a pair of lady's boxers I wear.

But scissors screw this all up. It comes from the Latin cisorium- a cutting thing. But that can go either way- in the plural or singular sense. A pair of scissors are two cutting things joined together, though once joined together it is a single cutting instrument. And really, a single leg of a scissor does not work for cutting. In this case convention wins out over what is. Or maybe how we identify and describe things is a poor representation of what a thing really is. But in the life or use of a thing we get a better sense of what something might be.

Of course this has nothing to do with anything religious. Statements of faith and systematic theology are perfectly good ways of treating something boxable like God. Wow that came out of left field.