Sunday once again and trying to find something entertaining or informative or both was proving difficult….so I sat back and thought about days gone past….
You guys know that I would find something that is there but seldom thought about for any length of time.
I can remember when I got my first jock strap…..it was when I was in middle school and PE was a mandatory class.
With that memory I also started thinking about the item itself….where and when did this piece of clothing come into being?
Happy 150th birthday, dear jockstrap. How far you’ve come from your modest but mighty days of protecting the precious parts of bicycle messengers as they navigated the bumpy cobblestones of Boston. Invented for that purpose in 1874 by CF Bennett, who worked for a company now known as Bike Athletic, the strappy staple of yore has become a sex symbol of sorts with a reach well beyond athletics, per the AP. Fashion designers have fancied them up for catwalks. Kristen Stewart recently pulled on a Bike jockstrap for the cover of Rolling Stone, earning barbs from conservatives. Some athletes, both recreational and pro, still reach for one. And the jockstrap owes a debt to the gay men who’ve embraced it since the 1950s, when a hypermasculine aesthetic in gay fashion was in vogue.
Working out of Chicago, inventor Bennett set out to solve a problem in Boston for its so-called “bicycle jockeys.” In that day, “loose britches” were the norm, offering little in the way of support. From there, the jockstrap found big success as the men’s underwear industry grew. The slip-in cup came later, as the piece of fabric and elastic moved into the sports world, around the 1920s. “They’re very coquettish. They reveal, they conceal. It’s like a push-up bra,” says 53-year-old Andrew Joseph. Sean McDougle, 55, a queer nudist-naturist in upstate New York, owns about 40 jockstraps. “There’s a certain feeling of freedom,” he says. “But the look and feel is [also] just somehow really alluring.” To date, Bike Athletic has sold more than 350 million jockstraps worldwide. Tom Ford, Versace, Calvin Klein, Thom Browne, Emporio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, and Savage X Fenty have also put out jockstraps.
“It’s evolved almost into kind of male lingerie at this point,” says Alex Angelchik, who bought Bike Athletic with other investors in 2019. “From the ’70s through today, it became kind of a cult favorite within the gay community, and expanded to the metrosexual urban community.” Today, about 70% of Bike’s customers are gay men, he says. The variations of jockstraps today are endless, says Timoteo Ocampo, a Los Angeles-based designer who sells them online and in boutiques around the globe. His company, Timoteo, puts out men’s underwear, swimwear, and other clothing. “There’s detachable fronts, zipper fronts, colors,” he says. “Some companies are doing diamond chains on their jockstraps. … People get very creative. It’s more personal and showing who they are and being proud of that.”
Read the AP’s full story here.
Come on admit it! That was damn entertaining and made you think.
Have a great Sunday….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Something I have never owned, nor worn. I was never very ‘sporty’, and my underwear has almost always been what we call ‘Boxer shorts’ here.
Best wishes, Pete.
When we had PE it was required to have the jock strap and tennis shoes…..so we got introduced early. I love history chuq
Same thing with my Dah. He’s 73 now. And my Mum hated having to shower at school, which is understandable. But yeah, history is extremely interesting! I’m glad that my high school was so small that PE class was always the last class of the day, it’d often be morphed into a basketball practice really, but then we could get back home & shower if need be. In my opinion, I don’t think in today’s, um, highly perverse society, it’s even a safe or good idea to have showering at school. It always struck me as mostly unnecessary, but I realize “back in the day” tradition and whatnot was held more firmly. Which isn’t always a bad thing, of course. But sometimes it seems like, why does THIS tradition have to be enforced? 🤔
I played lacrosse so my PE was at the end of the day as well….chuq
My first experience with a “Jock Strap” came when I was just a fresh-faced 7th grader in public school and we were forced to wear one of the damned things for gymnasium (Physical fitness) class.
I thought the jock strap was an unnecessary addition to my ridiculous-looking white boxer-style gym shorts and it itched when I sweated and I hated it.
I also hated going down into that locker room in the dungeon-like basement of or school to prepare for gym class because all the other boys who thought they were already men were intent on inspecting each other’s personal physical attributes and I felt like the whole world around me had turned into perverts.
I hated the jockstrap back then and I hate it now and I guess I always will hate it because it never protected me from getting a hernia and I got one and had the operation to fix it and from that day to this, I have felt that some school administrators don’t know their rear ends from a hole in the ground.
Sounds very familiar John chuq
Great post! I was on Risperidone for a decade for my mental disorders (I was a guinea pig for about 30 years as psychs gave me virtually every psych drug in the book, and every time they would tweek a molecule slightly to make Celexa from, I can’t currently remember what the virtually identical med was named), they’d try me on tem too, that’s why I dislike big pharma. They’re so greedy. But, I digress. Risperidone can in some men cause excess breast tissue and lactation. I was already ballooned up due to Valproate and all the others, and I never did get that side effect, but with a troubled mind already, dang! And I’m going, “Lord, I feel like crap right now, I really don’t want to have to wear a support bra too.” Well, He answered mercifully. But I went to a small Christian private high school, and thus I kinda had to play in every sport. I’m .5 inch shy of 6’7″ tall so basketball was my fave. But baseball is what our principal played in college, so I felt pressured to play every sport, and I too, as beetleypete above, never owned or wore a jock strap, though the “crotch cup” I did use… it’s just too dangerous for my gonads to get nailed by a 90mph baseball. 😬
I am pleased that you liked the post….Sundays I try to be FYI and informative with some history when I can. chuq
Oh, yeah. I too only wear the “boxer briefs”, comfort and style, ever since I was old enough to buy my own clothes. Before, it was the “tighty whities.” My Dah still wears the tighty whities, or regular boxers, which in my humble opinion, aren’t very comfortable, seams and too looseness. The boxer briefs do seem to me tae be almost a perfect como of comfort and support. Although, to each his own, as far as I’m concerned. Though on Sunday it hit me how important underwear truly is, as I was looking in my dresser, I thought wow, I’m glad we have underwear, zipper burn would be horrible…
Zipper burn is truly an agonizing injury…..chuq