Why do men love to wear torn underwear?

“You look like a little boy” are not the words you hope your wife will tell you when you pull your pants down.

No, no, I’m not spilling any marital secrets.

I had just pulled my pants down to go to bed because if my legs could talk, they would express how appreciative we splurged on bamboo sheets.

It still stings to hear those words even in a PG context — even if my wife wasn’t judging me pre-performance.

She wasn’t wrong.

I did look like a little boy. The trunks I was wearing had bright neon squiggly lines running all over the fabric like a chicken on methamphetamines. They were also a little too tight, and my body was spilling out — even though I bought the size I’ve always bought.

I had recently decided to spruce up my underwear collection after my wife asked me one day, “What are you waiting for to get new underwear?”

My underwear looked haggard as if they were not allowed to eat bacon anymore or had doom-scrolled through 2020. What she didn’t understand was how uncomfortable it is for men to buy underwear.

I followed her question/advice/demand and decided it was time to embark on a journey to get a new underwear collection.

To start my journey of rediscovering the garments protecting the most valuable ornaments I have as a man, I needed to learn the vocabulary. Men don’t have one word for men’s underwear. We have categories like boxers, boxer briefs, trunks, thongs, speedos, jockstraps, strings, and briefs, often called tighty-whities when they are white, which coincidentally happens to be the worst color you can choose for men’s underwear.

But we don’t have one word that encompasses all that.

Women do. They have panties.

I’ve learned that in a society, what is important is labeled.

Panties are important for our society. Men’s underwear, not so much.

The first step towards a more honest conversation is to have words we can use in said conversation. So, for the time being, humor me, and let’s call men’s underwear ‘Ballsie-sackies.’

Then there is the part where if you want to get new ballsie-sackies, you first have to look at the oddly high-definition enlarged picture of what other men are packing.

I have to believe I don’t live in a world where I’m the only man weirded out by being forced to look at other guys’ junk before buying new underwear. There is a misalignment of incentives. Do they want us to buy their product or run away from it?

Ballsie-sackies manufacturers should take a hint from beer commercials and portray real men attaining unrealistic objects of desire. Like a man with a beer belly, wearing said underwear and a beautiful woman on each arm.

You might think that it seems like a big tableau to fit on the box. Maybe. But you can’t tell me they don’t oversize the models’ bananas and put them right there in your face. So the real estate is available.

Buying ballsie-sackies is a sharp reminder that it is very likely I’m underhung, and I’ll never get a six-pack.

But like everything else revolutionized by technology and eCommerce, there are players like Meeundies and Pair of Thieves trying to improve the customer experience by making it banana-less.

So, I started changing my ballsie-sackies by buying from these companies. But when did medium stop being medium?

I can still fit into the first suit I ever owned.

Granted, I have to get it fixed at least once a year because the seams break on my left inner thigh close to my crotch.

The break is consistent with what happened to all my other suits. It’s like I keep a knife as part of my everyday carry tucked away in my ballsie-sackies.

But I don’t.

If I have to guess, the breaks happen because, on the first day of class in business school, they tell you to spread your legs wide in meetings to take unnecessary space and exude confidence and gravitas.

But even though I can fit in the first suit I ever bought, medium ballsie-sackies seem to have shrunk even before I put them in the dryer for the first time.

When my wife saw me, she said a loincloth could cover more. I didn’t know what a loincloth was, so I googled it. And there I was, looking at other guys’ bananas again.

If I believed in the Law of Attraction, I would be concerned about what the ever-providing Universe was trying to tell me. I’m still worried about what Google is going to advertise to me.

In any case, I’ll keep on this journey as long as it takes because growth is uncomfortable, but it can’t be more uncomfortable than getting a wedgie every ten minutes.

It gives me comfort to know that brilliant minds are working to solve some of society’s most challenging problems, like desalinization and distribution of potable water, solar panels’ efficiency, and how to deliver food to remote villages of Africa.

I can only hope that someone just as brilliant is working on making the ballsie-sackies buying experience slightly better.

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