Underwear has trends. There is fashion when it comes to the things that no one sees but you. I have heard girls say that they feel cuter when they are wearing cute underwear. Now there is something I can understand about women. At first I pretended that I couldn’t but now I think men in general understand this desire for "cute" underwear that women have, otherwise we wouldn’t see one hundred different prints of unddies for men when we go to the Gap. Guys understand this feeling cute in cute underwear business. Boxers or briefs of many a different assortment may be found at the Gap.
Oh and think about the locker room around sixth or seventh grade. Not that I was looking around but you have to notice that the cool guys aren’t wearing their whitey-tighties anymore. Boxers were the thing. You didn’t even have to go to the locker room if you wanted to see them. Some guys were so proud of the move from brief to boxers that they had to pull down their pants a little to show everybody.
I started thinking about this when reading Donald Miller’s book, Searching For God Knows What. It isn’t his most recent book but I am a little behind and am just now getting to it. In Searching For God Knows What Miller tells a story about sideshows. You know, the women with beards and men who swallow swords. Apparently, there were efforts to protest the sideshows, claiming that the deformed were being exploited. However, the acts disagreed saying that they were paid well plus they had their own community of people who understood each other. I though that this sounded fairly beautiful. A community that is not based on appearance at all. No hierarchy right? Actually, a hierarchy did emerge. A three legged man had a lucky break. I guess he was pretty intimidating in his act, so much so that a man attacked him. The attack made the papers making the three legged man a celebrity among misfits. Forget the days of comparing the three legged man to the woman with a beard. He was in a league of his own and thus there he was better.
This made me better realize how arbitrary the hierarchy is. Underwear for crying out loud! It’s either hilarious or very sad. Think about it this way; who is a roll model for you? If not a roll model, who is ahead of you in the hierarchy? In your hierarchy? In my hierarchy there are a lot of musicians. I act like a lot of them. I dress like a lot of them. Or there is my “the great outdoorsies” hierarchy where I have to shop at REI to feel validated. Or the Goodwill shopper hierarchy. Or maybe all of a sudden I decide I want to join the more metro/urban crowd. My wardrobe gets pretty confused because of this lack of divisiveness. The thing is is that I know how to join these hierarchies. I know what to do in order to join these ranks or how to just participate in them. I just have to be more like the person ahead of me. So go ahead a think about the person in front of you. Give yourself a second. Once you have pictured that person ask yourself “What kind of underwear to they have on?” You know don’t you. Not because you have seen that person in their underwear but because you can just imagine what kind of underwear they would wear based entirely on what kind of person they are. Sure you have some crazies out there who just shock you once you find out what they wear. “YOU WEAR A THONG!!” or maybe nothing comes between them and their Levi's. That sort of thing. If your still not sure you buy into this then try to picture someone like the president wearing anything but whitey-tighties. He’s just a whitey-tighties guy, is he not?
OK, now imagine this: the guy in front of you in the hierarchy is wearing bikini briefs. In fact, everyone in front of you is. You start thinking “I am the only guy in the locker room who wears boxers. I am so lame.” So you switch to bikini briefs. Just like that you become a bikini briefs guy. Well, maybe not “just like that.” You buy one pair at first because you’re apprehensive. You put them on. You wear them for a day. You think to yourself, “This isn’t to bad.” Then you buy a pack of them. Before long you are tossing your boxers out and filling that uns-drawer with bikini briefs.
The point is that we are not very independent people. What is the basic motivation for doing what you do? I write in this blog for several reasons but what it boils down to is I want people to like me. That’s why I say a lot of the things I say in conversations. I want to fit in and I want people to like me. Someone out there please like me. Most of us are like that.
“Why did you write this book?”
“Basically because I wanted something out there that people could see, like, then come back and affirm me. It is the motivation behind most all things I do.”
By reading Searching For God Knows What I am finding out some great stuff about this hierarchy. Don Miller calls it “the lifeboat” or “the circus.” He offers insights that are far more interesting than underwear so maybe if you read all of this you should read it.
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