Over the past few years, I’ve been conducting market research for the male underwear industry and I would like to share my findings and interpretations. There is a lot of action happening in this market right now, with various online luxury underwear brands popping up.
The first thing I’ve noticed is there has been consolidation in underwear types. When I was a kid, you had briefs, boxers and boxer briefs. I now feel like 95% of men wear boxer briefs, the other 5% being geriatrics wearing tight-whiteys and a few weirdos wearing boxers.
But the key insight I’d like to share today is one that surprised me: there is almost a 50/50 split on the usage preferences of the underwear penis hole. If you’re unaware of basic male underwear construction principles, there is a flap located right in the junk region of almost all male underwear, which allows an object to pass through the underwear if the flap is opened, usually being the dick of the wearer for urination purposes.
At least this is was I thought. Because apparently to over half of the US male population, this flap/hole is there for absolutely no reason whatsoever. These men do not use this hole to allow their dong to pass through their underwear, they have opted out of this technique in exchange for pulling their waistband below their johnson to piss. As I stated, I find the proportion of flap-users and waistband-pullers about equal, with waistband-pullers owning a slight edge. I ask this question frequently to groups of guy friends, because I’m always astounded at how evenly split the group is and how flabbergasted each group is by the other group’s technique.
Side note: this group distinction does not apply when wearing zipper-less pants such as basketball shorts or sweats. For these garments, waistband pulling is unavoidable.
Personally, I am a flap-user. To clarify for you waistband-pullers out there, when I saunter up to a urinal to piss, I perform the following actions:
unzip my pants
reach through the pants hole
pry open the underwear flap
grab my willy
pull it through both holes
piss
stuff in back through
zip up
To any flap-user or female, this may sound completely reasonable. To a waistband-puller, the process I described is probably as foreign as a bidet is to your grandfather. The waistband-pullers process, in comparison, is crude but simple. Here is their process, as far as I understand it:
undo belt, if wearing one
unbutton pants
unzip pants
pull underwear below dick
pull dick over underwear
piss
let waistband snap back into place
zip, button, belt
There are also a few outlier techniques, which are even more rare. These include the hybrid, where the user opens their pants fully, but uses their underwear flap. There is also the rare breed who pull their entire package over their waistband, balls included (strange indeed). The last is the little kid technique, where you just drop your pants with your ass fully exposed.
My take: I find waistband-pullers unsophisticated. When asked why they don’t use the penis flap, which was designed specifically to allow for ease of urination, they usually respond with some irrational fear of scraping their dick on their zipper. I have never experienced this; it’s quite simple to just grab a fist full of dong and pull it out, fully protected by hand. I have tried the waistband-puller technique, just for the experience. My first criticism of the method is that it often requires two hands, one for dick and one to hold your pants up, unless you want to spread your legs and squat to keep them up. The next issue I have is that you have to really stretch your waistband low if you don’t want a kink in your member, which hinders the piss. This leads to worn out undies. Lastly, if you are feeling a bit buzzed and happen to lose grip of your waistband, you will simultaneously rubberband-snap your dick and piss all over yourself. This is a unnecessary risk I will not take.
So are you team waistband-puller or team flap-user?