It’s bizarre, isn’t it?

And, to be fair, it depends on the age group one is dealing with. Younger people now tend to be much more awkward about nudity in locker rooms, whereas people my age and older (i.e. late 30s) don’t seem to have a problem with it. They’ll walk around starkers and not care at all, whereas the younger guys will go into the toilet stalls and change with the door closed, etc.

As for the jockstraps thing: I haven’t been in the sorts of locker rooms where people usually wear them (unless it’s someone older–again!–who wears a swimmer’s jock under their swimsuit, and there’s precious few of those types of guy around any longer), so I can’t say for certain. On the other hand, it’s kind of assumed to be a “manly” garment no matter what…unless, of course, a gay guy (who is probably far more fit and “manly” than many straight men) is wearing one, then it’s just a “sissy” thing, etc.

For many, and as a kind of humor thing that has gone across the generations, it is funny when a young teenager or tween gets their first jock for P.E., and then doesn’t know how to put it on because it looks confusing in comparison to more conventional sorts of underwear. My dad tells a joke still about a guy who was a distant cousin of his who, on the first day of P.E. when he was a kid in the ’50s, put his on backwards, which would have an intriguing effect in certain other contexts (and, indeed, some underwear designers today have created things quite similar to that!), but definitely wasn’t what was the desired outcome in rural eastern Washington middle school in the 1950s.

It’s intriguing to me that, just as much as thongs/g-strings/etc., the “regular” average (straight) guy in the U.S. doesn’t think of jockstraps as a valid “option” for what they’d consider “underwear.” It’s kind of a special-occasion-only thing, and only if one is a serious athlete, or–here’s that word again!–“gay” in the descriptive and pejorative sense. Just like most regular average straight guys in the U.S. think that speedos are only for professional swimmers (only when they’re practicing these days), divers, water polo players, possibly body builders, and then gay guys, i.e. generally things that one’s regular average straight guy in the U.S. isn’t and never will be (for good and ill).

Isn’t the sociology of genital-covering garments fun to explore? 😉

I would say Dr. Phil has his degree in Sociology with that post, well said.

Our generation, I’m a couple years older, only had the jock strap as an option for active sports such as running, basketball, football, wrestling, soccer, etc. to wear under our shorts in the 80’s and 90’s. The jock strap was the norm in the locker room and everyone was used to it, and if you wore your tighty whities under your shorts, you were looked at as the poor sucker whose mother didn’t like jock straps. You were the odd one out if you didn’t wear a jock.

Other then wrestling and swimming, all the uniforms were baggy, loose gear, even football pants were quite a bit more relaxed then today’s ultra tight pants (which I have to say, I think ours in the early 90’s in high school were more comfortable). The jock strap was our way of keeping from things flopping around, until the spandex revolution of the very late 80’s, but we still wore a jock under them. It never would have occurred to any of us at the time to wear a swimming brief instead of a jock; now I wish it had, didn’t get into swimming until college and finally found the love for the speedo.

Today’s high school and college guys have so many more options to keep the groin area under control with all the compression gear available in the last number of years. The Under Armour and Nike Pro are common sights under shorts today in the sports world This gear covers more up and so I guess they feel more concealed then in a jock strap, even though it shows more definition of the body in my opinion. Just look at the track gear, becoming rare to see floppy shorts at a meet, and the women, well, all I have to say there, it’s about time!

I guess, I see the jock strap fading away with our generation, and the more coverage of the compression gear taking over, even though, their lengths are hiking up the thighs too. Communal showers are becoming a thing of the past, but I’m not certain that’s all that bad either?

Lastly, that Dietz jock looks rather comfortable, and thinking it will be joining my small collection of compression jocks currently in my speedo drawer, along side my rare Under Armour jocks.

And yes, studying such apparel is a task, but someone has to do it.

I think Dr. Phil and cr make a valid number of points about historical uses of jocks and speedos and their relative ghettoization into specific sports and the gay world now, but I think, to cr’s points, this links up with the appearance of compression gear, like UnderArmour and such. I think you have to look to the late 90s, when I was moving from high school to college, to see the moment when things changed. First, briefs were stigmatized and boxers were popular. They covered more, by virtue of more fabric, but there was the chance to move and to tantalize, less with a compressed outline of genitals, and more with the pendulum swing of them. This led to the development of boxer briefs, which were somehow less censurable than regular briefs, but still provided the support. From there, board shorts began to eclipse standard swim trunks, and you start to get the idea that someone, somewhere, decided that the more skin you covered from your waist to your knees, the more of a “dude” or a masculine man you actually were. This, I think, is psychologically tied to the other appellations of briefs, like tighty whities and man panties. By comparing briefs and other similar forms of undergarments or swimwear with women, the bulk of the male population thought these were more feminized forms of dress and abandoned them. This allows for the possibility of briefs, jocks, speedos and the like to be taken over by the gays, who were already seen as being feminized themselves, and to fetishize them, make them into essential components of sexual play and arousal.

The only problem now is: briefs, I think, are making a comeback. People are getting tired of the bulk of boxers, because they don’t fit in skinny jeans, and the lack of durability in the elastic on boxer brief leg openings. Couple this with the ascendance of Mad Men and other period shows from the middle of the last century, and the cultural cache of those moments, which featured a differently-construed masculine paradigm, begins to erode the position constructed over the last 15 years, at least a little. Now if we could only convince competitive swimmers to go back to speedos!