Male Underwear?

While looking across pictures that might inspire me, I ran into this website that appears to cater to ‘jocks’ from ‘all around the world’. As I’m not exactly sure what this means, I decided to give the website a click. Upon further digression, I found what is said to be ‘underwear’ modeled by males. It’s kind of hard to miss that what is in those pictures is definitely male, but apparently it might fool some as the title of this page is “Male Underwear”.

                Have a look for yourself:
http://www.internationaljock.com/mens-underwear.html

Perhaps the biggest issue I’m having with this is what is noticeable in the pants; the penis. Now, I know absolutely nothing about advertising and even less about what drives males to buy certain brands of underwear, but I don’t understand the placement of the noticeable genitalia. As a straight female, this disturbs me. I’m not sure if the reason of the obvious penis is to show consumers what other dudes look like in underwear or to give gay men a show, but it just isn’t cutting it for me. 

At first, yes, I was disturbed by the man-parts being thrown in my face, but then I began to think of the reasons that may be behind it. Unlike most advertisements these days, or pictures in online catalogs, the only object of clothing in this picture is the underwear. There is no torso, there is no shirt, there are no abs, in fact there is barely any leg. (Although if you do look at the top of the picture, the ‘V’ is included, meaning that these men are all incredibly fit.) Therefore the central focus of these pictures are what is being sold to customers; underwear. (Upon clicking on these photos, are full size images. Yet these are not on the main page as in most female online shopping.)

Personally, I’m used to being sold a shirt and seeing the full body, it’s very common to be sold a skirt and see a tank top in the picture as well. The outfit is usually complete. (See http://www.forever21.com/Product/Category.aspx?br=f21&category=whatsnew_app_tops  for examples.) Yet even when this isn’t the case, which typically is found in ads for men’s underwear, you get sold the whole body. In these instances, these pictures usually involve men with rock hard abs (that are sometimes photoshopped on) and some type of pose. Two likely poses are “The Lean” in which the model is leaning against something, perhaps a wall, and “The Face Off” in which the model is staring into the camera daringly. In such pictures, it’s easy to see what is selling the product. Thus being the man, the model.

Thus bringing back the image of the penis, it’s unavoidable. Advertisers sell to customers from the center of the page out. In this case, the center of the ad is the genitalia. There is no face selling these underwear. There aren’t abs encouraging females to think these are the best things they’ve ever laid their eyes on. There is no pose. There’s barely a model! The only thing selling these undergarments is how a stranger's penis looks in them- an issue we all look into when buying clothes of course! 

Perhaps these underwear sell themselves. Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps the image of a noticeable penis sells more than just underwear. At first glance, this is all that is seen to the customer's eye. However, clicking on the pictures bring about a male model in which sometimes he appears in his undergarments as a normal man, and sometimes his genitalia is threatening to pop out. (http://www.internationaljock.com/calvin-klein-steel-micro-boxer-brief-electric-tangerine,54309.html) Whatever the case, whatever the pose, whatever the body shape; I'd still rather not have a model's penis popping out at me while trying to shop.