Keep it brief

I hate to mention the unmentionables, but what is it with gay men and underwear?

Specifically, what is it with gay men standing around in a gay pub watching other gay men strut around in their underwear?

There’s been an awful lot of this kind of palaver in Sydney recently, with Stonewall staging the finals of their underwear model competition, and Arq livening up a recent night with a fashion show featuring big blokes in nothing but their smalls.

And if you open up the pages of our gorgeous gay glossy, DNA, what do you see? Jocks in their jocks, and fashion stories that are short on length but big on briefs.

Clearly, we are a tribe who get a kick out of our dacks.

I’m not immune from all this, of course. I fully understand the beauty of seeing a sexy guy wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys.

Indeed, when my boyfriend recently announced he needed to go underwear shopping, I badgered him into buying the more expensive designer brands, rather than the cheaper options.

He looks totally hot in his fetching new threads, of course, but the better, more enlightened part of me wonders about our collective mania for overpriced undergarments.

What’s the collective environmental impact of all this unbridled consumerism?

I know I sound like I’m getting my knickers in a twist but, in a world of rising greenhouse gases, shrinking polar icecaps and imminent environmental devastation, I wonder about the importance we place on something as ultimately trivial as underwear.

Somewhat surprisingly, someone who seems well over the whole undies thing is Tom Ford, who this week told the New York Post that he always goes commando.

I’m famous for not wearing underwear. My mother keeps saying, -˜Please stop telling people you don’t wear underwear,’ Mr Ford confided.

But I hope he continues to tell people that he prefers to go footlong and fancy free, and I hope the trend catches on, as well.

It’d be good for the environment, and it would also mean that we’d all get to see more dicks and bums in the changing rooms at the gym. I call that a definite win/win.