Kath's Valentine's Ann Summers' Party 29/1/05

[sweep]

Originally Posted by Alun

I assume we all know the tartan vibrator joke?

I do
But you may as well carry on know you've started

[Mr T.]

I am immune to your underwear
By Kevin Myers
(Filed: 30/01/2005)

British women spend on average £72 a year on lingerie – more than the women of any other country in Europe – according to the French Institute of Fashion.

Lingerie is a broad category, but not so broad as to include men: chaps don't do lingerie, and that's that. Equality shies and flees before the L-word.

Whomever women buy their panties for, it's not for the benefit of men. The only male who ever said of knickers, they're rather nice, leave them on, honey, was Elvis Presley. This was around the time he was eating several pounds of deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches a day, popping 235 different prescription drugs, and hadn't had a bowel movement in a year. That's what it takes for a man to tell a woman to keep her knickers on.

Actually, healthy males don't really notice knickers, although men will probably be gathering in large numbers at the International Lingerie Fair in Paris this weekend – not to admire the lingerie, but its contents. Women, however, adore the flimsy items that do the concealing, even though these usually remain invisible, known only to the wearer.

So for daytime use, women buy exotic knickers and suspenders that no one will see. Come nightfall, and they don floaty, diaphanous peignoirs to be immediately enfolded and concealed in vast masses of nocturnal quilt, because… well, actually we don't know why. Science can loft cameras 700 zillion miles onto an invisible rock no one knew was there and send back pictures of smaller rocks, looking amazingly like earth-rocks – that was well worth spending £10 billion on, now wasn't it? – but it can provide absolutely no explanation for such female behaviour.

You can, of course, unscientifically argue that women enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror in their sexy attire, but that can't be true. The modern woman only looks at a reflection of herself in order to find fault.

Amid her litany of woe about her breasts, her bum, her belly and her rippling acres of cellulite, she's hardly going to console herself at the sight of the thread of silken lace covering her pubic area, and disappearing into her bottom, now is she?

Or maybe she is. However, the flimsy nature of most modern knickers brings me – reluctantly – to that baffling female item, the thong. This is designed to cling to the primary outlets of the human body with positively adhesive attention to detail, in areas where one would have thought loads of fresh air was preferable.

This cannot possibly be healthy for the wearer: but in addition to her needs, what about the needs of the thong? How does it feel about a life trapped down there, with no room to move, no sunlight, no air, and maybe just the occasional gust of wind? What does a thong soon become but one's own personal germ-factory on a string?

No, men don't do lingerie, and – David Beckham aside – we don't do thongs. However, we do do underpants, and British males spend on average £15 a year on them. That much, hmm: what a fastidious lot you are on your side of the Irish Sea. I happen to know how much I spent on underwear last year: nothing whatever, matching precisely the expenditure of the year before. As a matter of principle, I think that the life expectancy of a pair of underpants should be about a decade or so. The decisive factor in such matters is a failure of either elastic or of retentivity: in which case they go into the cleaning basket and spend another 10 glorious years shining shoes.

As for those other items usually covered by the L-word, well, like many men I don't wear vests. Indeed, the only men I know who invariably don vests are, inexplicably, professional footballers during matches – which is like soldiers in the jungle wearing fur-coats. Moreover, most men don't wear pyjamas, simply because we haven't got any.

Thus the attitude to secret clothing is a defining feature of gender. For men, underwear is usually minimalist, functional and preferably eternal. Women, on the other hand, indulge themselves privately, finding pleasure in the unseen satins and silks that slide along their skin, and in the ornate lace of whose existence only they are aware. This is a world about which men know nothing, unless, that is, they have been blessed – usually, for some reason, by homosexuality – with a rare insight into the clandestine sensuality of women.

So what aspiring item of youthful underwear at the start of its career would aspire to clothe the grisly body of a middle-aged man like me when, cut and shaped differently, and adorned with frills, it could intimately clothe the nether parts of Nicole Kidman or Michelle Pfeiffer? And how many Y-fronts, contemplating their melancholy fate, reflect how close they might have come to the true championship of lingerie, performing similar duties on a beautiful woman? Hush. Listen. Can you hear my boxers mumbling sadly: "I could have been a contender"?

[Louby Lou]

Originally Posted by Mr T.

British women spend on average £72 a year on lingerie

Is that all? Thats an average shopping trip spend... he he

Originally Posted by Mr T.

British males spend on average £15 a year on them

Now why doesnt that surprise me

[kath2407]

Well the "ladies" at my party spent between them over £350 and I got £31.70 commission - no I will NOT tell you what I spent it on - besides I can't really remember I was so pissed!!!

K XX

[RickG]

£15 for blokes sounds a lot... Is that including socks?

[Steve S]

Originally Posted by RickG

£15 for blokes sounds a lot... Is that including socks?

bloody better be and string vests

Safe diving,
Steve

[dry suit diver]

Originally Posted by RickG

£15 for blokes sounds a lot... Is that including socks?

is that a year or an adult lifetime?

Originally Posted by Mr T.

British women spend on average £72 a year on lingerie –

One item of Lingerie almost costs that much, I dread to think what the other women in Europe wear, if they spend less than £72.

[Andy the Coastie]

Originally Posted by kath2407

Well the "ladies" at my party spent between them over £350 and I got £31.70 commission - no I will NOT tell you what I spent it on - besides I can't really remember I was so pissed!!!

K XX

lets just say, ,,,,,,,,, theres no welsh or fur with the rabbit thats comming and won't need a hutch.

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Steve S

bloody better be and string vests

Safe diving,
Steve

umm these responses say a lot about men (and explain a lot about the men I have dated) - hey guys here's a way out idea - why not buy NEW underwear regularly which doesnt look like you've owned it 15 years? It would be nice if men went to as much effort as women do to look good whn getting undressed :