Knickers -- in a twist

Don't let the picture worry you, this isn't some sort of fetishistic entry in my blogspace, it's just an observation about apparel and confusion in the male psyche.

I have a dear friend who runs a very high class lingerie shop. Periodically I drop by to say hi, and to catch up on life matters with somebody I've known for well over a decade. Sometimes, if she is on the phone, or dealing with a customer, I'll glance around me and realize I am surrounded by items of nether wear of the sort that causes some men to be uncomfortable to the poiint of palpitations. Why is that? I don't think men's shorts make women uncomfortable, yet grown men can be embarrassed into foot-shuffling blushes, and other behaviors that are more suited to a schoolboy.

A few years ago another lingerie purveyor in the community used to mount an annual Christmas show for men only. I attended a couple of these as a reporter, and they were great fun. She supplied food, drinks, and then a fashion show featuring models wearing, in some cases, the skimpiest of attire items. Not a disagreeable newspaper assignment, you understand. One year it was a tiny bit self-consciousness inducing to me, since one of the models, wearing the bitsiest items, happened to be my dentist's assistant. It felt odd the next time I saw her in her crisp whites, and couldn't help but wonder what she was wearing beneath the uniform.

But, the point of the fashion show, as the proprietor told me, was that many men were simply too embarrassed to go into her shop and buy Christmas items for wife, or girlfriend. She said their self-consciousness was often palpable for those brave enough to venture in, and they would blush openly when they described what they might be thinking of buying.
"That would be OK if they weren't the same people who ogle the girls in Playboy," she noted, with a laugh. "I guess when it comes down to real women, and real women's underthings, a lot of men are cowards."

Yes, men can go off to war, explore the upper amazon, endure excruciating physical agonies, but hit a guy full on with a tiny pair of bikini briefs that he might want to buy for the missus, and he wilts. He loves their esthetic, and the idea of them no doubt, but he is psycholigically unprepared for them. He'll buy her a deep-fryer instead and then wonder why she is chagrined on Christmas morning. "No, really, it's a great fryer. You can do donuts and onion rings, one after the other without changing the oil. Hey, where did you go?"

At a personal revelation level, I am not cowardly about making such a purchase. I have bought a number of women silky, satiny items over the years, and have enjoyed so doing. Consequently, when I sit in my friend's shop, I'm not bothered. Appreciative of what's on display, but never embarrassed.

So, where does the distress come from in certain men? Is it because, especially in the case of panties, because they sit on the most intimate part of the body? That, I think, is part of their charm. Is it because these same men were caught surreptitiously and naughtilly looking up little girls' skirts in the schoolyard? Maybe. Is it because, and I'll turn Freudian here, their mothers wear knickers? I really don't know.

All I do know is that of all items of female apparel, panties, from Bridget Jones' granny garment, to the teeniest thongs have the power to bring about an attack of the vapors on the part of a lot of males, and maybe that men are more shy than a lot of women think they are.