Another offering from your antipodean correspondent - but hopefully it will be of interest to all…

I saw the results of two surveys that have been done here in New Zealand - an encouraging one about underwear; and a depressing one about speedos.

The Great Revealing Undie Debate
This was conducted by Bendon Man (who are linked with McPherson Men’s underwear line). This pic is one of their underwear ads. An article on Thread, an online fashion-culture magazine, says: “New Zealand males really do care about what they wear down under. Forget metro and retro sexuals – there’s a new breed of New Zealand male – the retro-metro-undie-sexual. That’s a guy who likes to think he doesn’t care about what undies he wears, but really he does. While he doesn’t like shopping for undies, he knows exactly what style he wants and usually buys them himself rather than entrusting a girlfriend or mother. And what is the retro-metro-undie-sexual wearing? The overall results from the G.R.U.D show that if you stop your average punter on the street, he’s likely to be sporting a black, fitted trunk or boxer-brief in stretch cotton.”

Sounds good to me!! Click here to see the full article, which also includes the fascinating statistics that “a staggering 17% of guys shop when their underwear is too holey to know which one to put their leg through” and “the NZ bloke is a clean one – with 90% changing their underwear every day.” Hmmm…by my reckoning that means there must be about 15,000 guys who don’t change their pants every day…

To be brief - no thanks!
A much more depressing article appeared in the New Zealand Herald - our main newspaper. “A poll shows that tight-fitting togs - known almost universally by the brand name Speedos - still haven’t won general approval. When asked what type of togs look best on men, more than threequarters of New Zealanders preferred boardshorts over briefs. But the Herald DigiPoll survey shows that men have no objection to skimpy beachwear - just as long as it’s on women…the court of public opinion is a powerful one and for most beachgoers, even giving brief trunks colourful names - grape satchel, banana hammock or budgie smugglers - has not succeeded in making them appealing.” Makes you sick, doesn’t it? Click here to read the full article.

I wonder why these two trends seem to be going in opposite directions? I guess it’s because at the beach your togs are on show, whereas (for most people!) your undies are not on show to the public.

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