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Boxers or Briefs: A Gay Look at the Evolution of Underwear in the Movies

Men in their underwear.

The words are enough to catch the attention of most gay and

bisexual men, but the sight of an actual man in his underwear is even more exciting.

Better still is a scene of a man in his underwear in the movies, where it’s

okay to stare — where you’re supposed

to stare! — or even rewind.

Sometimes such scenes are well integrated into the plot of a

movie, as in 13 Going on 30 (2004) when Jennifer Garner, a 13 year-old

girl who finds herself in the body of a 30 year-old woman, is shocked by the

provocative strip-tease of her boyfriend, and realizes just how out-of-place

she really is.

Warning: a few of the clips may have some language not safe for work.

13 Going on 30

And sometimes scenes of men in their underwear are

completely gratuitous, as in Living Out

Loud (1998), an unabashed chick flick that throws in a revealing (and

career-making) scene of Eddie Cibrian in his white boxer briefs, seemingly

solely for the interest of the film’s purported female audience (weirdly, the

film bombed anyway).

Living Out Loud

Hollywood

has a complicated relationship with men in their underwear. From its inception,

the industry has been controlled by heterosexual men (or closeted gay ones), making

movies for a male-dominated, supposedly heterosexual audience. As a result,

women in their underwear have almost always been objects of desire, even from

the very beginning.

But a man in his undies? That’s not so simple. Just having

the movie acknowledge that such a man might be desirable has been fraught with

danger, throwing suspicion on the filmmakers, and possibly alienating the

heterosexual male audience.

How did this come to be? And how have things changed since

then? Let’s find out on a “brief” stroll through the history of men in their

underwear in the movies.

All this will be accompanied by appropriate video clips — but

only in the interests of scholarship, of course!

The Early Years

By the time the American movie industry was firmly

established in the early 1930s, men in the movies weren’t objects of desire.

That was the idea anyway.

“Men couldn’t be sensual with their bodies,” says Paul

Ehret, who has researched and written about underwear for InternationalJock.com. “If a guy had his

shirt off, he had to be chopping wood or performing some function that was

manly. It wasn’t supposed to be sensual — which, of course, just made it more

sensual.”

The early Tarzan

movies were a good example of this “inadvertent” sensuality. Former Olympic

swimmer Johnny Weissmuller spends the movies in nothing but a very revealing loincloth. But it wasn’t

considered sensual, at least openly.

Next page! Tarzan, Tom

Cruise, and more!

“Weissmuller was a star of 1932 Olympics,” Ehret says. “The

public was used to seeing him with nothing much covering his loins.”

Tarzan and His Mate

As for men’s underwear, it didn’t show up much in the movies

at all. When it did, sometimes it was for realism, as in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

(1948), which showed the would-be miners in their union jacks. But mostly, it

was simply for comic effect.

“Men’s underwear was the punch line to a joke,” says Alonso

Duralde, author of 101 Must-See Movies For Gay Men. “It was boxers covered with

hearts, and the only time you ever saw it was when a guy’s pants got pulled off

or something.”

This was because of the Hays Code, a set of “guidelines”

enacted by the movie industry in 1930 and enforced starting in 1934, in an effort to forestall

actual government censorship. The code had a long list of do’s and don’ts -- no

inter-racial relationships, for example, and no mocking of religion. None of

the guidelines dealt specifically with underwear, but the whole point of the

code was supposedly to preserve “modesty” and “good taste” in the film

industry.

From 1934 until the 1950s, modesty and restraint ruled the

day. As such, even though form-fitting briefs were introduced in 1935 and grew

rapidly in popularity, men in the movies wore baggy boxers in movies like Brewster’s Millions (1945), Everybody Does It (1949), Father of the Bride (1950), The Seven Year Itch (1955), and Damn Yankees! (1958). Jimmy Stewart’s

underwear in It’s a Wonderful Life

(1946) was as far from erotic as you can get.

Still, some filmmakers, chafing at the limitations of the

Hays Code, occasionally found ways to liven up their movies. It’s probably an

urban legend that Clark Gable caused t-shirt sales to plummet when he took off

his shirt in It Happened One Night (1934) to reveal that he

wasn’t wearing an undershirt, but he made an impression nonetheless. And Paul

Newman caught more than Joanne Woodward’s eye when he walked across the screen

in just a pair of boxers in The Long, Hot Summer (1958).

The Long, Hot Summer

A New Realism

Through the fifties and especially the sixties, filmmakers

and even corporate executives began pushing back against the limits of the Hays

Code. American audiences were starting to see far more relevant, provocative

fare from foreign filmmakers. Many of these movies were even winning Oscars

and, far more importantly, racking up impressive box office grosses.

The Hays Code was finally retired in 1967 (replaced by the

MPAA, which rated movies G, PG, and all the rest). “People had decided they

were tired of being told what they could see,” Ehret says. “The movie industry

decided they had to mature or they were going to lose the audience, because America had

grown up.”

As for men in their underwear, that meant a jarring new

realism. Since briefs had become more fashionable than boxers over the years,

that meant that’s what most men now wore in movies like Midnight Cowboy (1969), The

Last Picture Show (1971), An

Unmarried Woman (1978), and The

Amityville Horror (1979).

The Amityville Horror

But for the most part, even these form-fitting and often

very revealing briefs weren’t intended to be erotic, just realistic. After all,

the seventies were the era of gritty realism in film, and it was a realism as

seen by very heterosexual male director-auteurs such as Martin Scorsese and Francis

Ford Coppola.

Next page! The pants

finally come off!

“Most of the time it was to show a character’s

vulnerability,” Ehret says. “Or it was shedding clothes at the gym, which had

to do with male camaraderie.”

But what was considered merely realistic to a straight man

could be intensely erotic to a gay or bisexual one, especially someone not used

to seeing much of the male form on screen.

The Glorious,

Revealing Years

Almost every man in the movies wore briefs in the seventies

and eighties, from Brad Davis in Midnight

Express (1978) to Aidan Quinn in Reckless

(1984), Michael O’Keefe in The Great

Santini (1979) to Keanu Reeves in Parenthood

(1989).

Even major stars had no qualms about donning form-fitting

briefs, including Clint Eastwood in Play

Misty for Me (1971), Michael J. Fox in Back

to the Future (1985), Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982), and Mel

Gibson in The River (1984).

The scenes where Richard Gere dances around in his ratty

briefs in Looking For Mr. Goodbar

(1977) truly have to be seen to be believed. And when

Dan Aykroyd received oral sex from the ghost in Ghostbusters (1984), he was wearing — you guessed it —

tighty-whities.

Parenthood

“If you see a woman in lingerie [in the movies],” Duralde

says, “the implication is that she’s inviting the sexual attention of men. The

question is, is the same thing true for a guy in his underwear?”

In the seventies and much of the eighties, for the most

part, the answer was no. It’s impossible to watch Jeff Goldblum in his briefs

in The Fly (1986) and not be struck

by how incredibly revealing they are, but also wonder exactly what the

filmmaker was up to. Is the scene supposed to be erotic? More likely, the

filmmakers are merely contrasting the actor’s virility — and Goldblum

definitely looks more fit than he’s probably ever looked in his life — with the

physical transformation that takes place after the housefly DNA begins to take

over his body.

The Fly

Tom Cruise in his

Underpants

No one has done more for underwear in the movies, or

benefited more from being in his underwear, than Tom Cruise. And most of the

time, briefs have been his underwear of choice, from the highbrow movies like The Color of Money (1986) to the lowbrow early films

like Losin’ It (1983).

In fact, Tom Cruise’s breakout performance in Risky Business (1983) included what is

perhaps the most famous underwear scene of all time. Is the scene supposed to

be erotic? Possibly, but only in an innocent, seemingly uncalculated way. The

scene is simultaneously the gayest thing ever put on film while somehow

managing to be not gay at all.

Next up! Tom Cruise in

his underwear — again and again and again!

Risky Business

Cruise dropped trou again a few years later, and was

surrounded by a bunch of other guys dropping trou, in Top Gun (1986) — a pivotal movie in the history of men in their

underwear in movies. At last a major Hollywood

movie was openly and deliberately eroticizing guys. Incredibly, because a gay

consciousness had not yet permeated America, the film, which clearly

flirted with homoeroticism, was not seen as particularly gay at the time, at

least outside the gay community.

Tom Cruise has shrewdly played with a gay sensibility

throughout his career, using a strong fashion sense and the overt homoeroticism

in his movies to appeal to women and trend-setting gay men, and to also give

himself a sense of edginess.

“Tom Cruise presents himself as this male action hero,”

Duralde says, “but there is something boyish about him, which makes him

appealing to women. Off-screen he’s cultivated the ‘I’m not gay’ thing, always

appearing on a motorbike or with some hot actress on his arm. But he puts his

toe in the water of gay sensibility. It’s subtle, and he’s always pulling back,

so it never appears to be too gay.”

Cruise’s delicate “gay” tap-dance has worked

wonderfully — until recently, when his career has spiraled out of control,

fueled, in part by gay rumors.

Still, in a nice bit of career symmetry, Cruise later did

one more very attention-getting underwear scene, in Magnolia (1999). Incredibly, the contents of his briefs seemed to

have grown considerably since the days of Risky

Business.

Magnolia

The Teen Sex Comedies

The 1980s, of course, were the age of the teen sex comedy.

It all started with Porky’s (1982), a

raunchy, lowbrow sex farce the likes of which no one wanted to make — until it

grossed $105 million (on a budget of $4 million).

Suddenly everyone wanted to make a teen sex comedy.

Porky's

But if there was ever a genre created by heterosexual men for

heterosexual guys, it was the teen sex comedy. If gay people existed in these

movies at all, it was as an object of ridicule or the punch line to a joke.

This made sense, since the target audience of these movies was mostly homophobic

adolescent boys.

But the great irony of the 80s teen sex comedy is that,

despite being very, very heterosexual, they were sex farces, and in a sex

farce, it’s almost impossible to keep even your male leads from stripping down

to their underwear.

Reflecting the realism of a time in which most men wore

skimpy briefs, that’s what was reflected in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Losin’ It (1983), and Porky’s

Revenge (1985). The Last American

Virgin (1982) includes an underwear scene that is hard to believe (here’s an NSFW link to the

uncensored clip).

In other words, the ranks of the nation’s closeted gay and

bisexual teenagers had something to look at even in these avowedly heterosexual

sex comedies.

Next page! Briefs go

gay!

Eventually, of course, the teen sex comedy fell out of

fashion. And when the genre inevitably remerged in the form of American Pie (1999), something had

changed. The girls were still just as topless, but the revealing briefs on the

guys had been replaced by modest, baggy boxers.

American Pie

What happened between The

Last American Virgin and American Pie?

Briefs had gone out of fashion. Interestingly, the reason why had a lot to do

with gay men.

The Gayification of

Briefs (and the Return to Boxers!)

In the eighties, as movies like Risky Business and Top Gun

were showcasing men in their underwear in a more erotic way, men’s underwear

itself was being eroticized by the underwear manufacturers. In 1982, Calvin

Klein introduced his first attention-getting Times Square

ad of a young man in nothing but white briefs — a campaign that would continue

throughout the decade.

“That was the first

era where men were being objectified in the media,” Duralde says. “You had the

Calvin Klein ads, the Soloflex commercial.”

All this coincided with the emergence of a visible gay

presence in America,

thanks to AIDS and the activism it inspired. The underwear ads themselves were

designed to appeal to the “new” marketing demographic of gay men; they were

created by gay men and featured the supposedly “gay” ideal of the defined,

hairless man.

But while the homoeroticism in Top Gun was missed by heterosexual America back in the 80's, it wasn’t long before the

gay/underwear association was too great to ignore. As a result, like Speedo

swimsuits, briefs and underwear in general became associated with gay men. And

as board shorts replaced Speedos as the swimsuit of choice (at least in America),

boxers replaced briefs, especially among young straight men.

In movies, the change was swift. In Bull Durham (1988), Tim Robbins wore briefs, but he was the comic

relief, the fool. The sexy star of the movie, Kevin Costner wore boxers. By the

time of Dead Poet’s Society (1989),

briefs weren’t anywhere to be seen. In Across

the Tracks (1991), Ricky Schroeder and a young Brad Pitt wore boxers and

boxer briefs, respectively.

Across the Tracks

Were movies reflecting fashion changes, or creating them, or

both? Either way, all of Michael Keaton’s different personalities in Multiplicity (1996) wore differently

colored boxers. Bruce Willis wore boxers in 1995’s Die Hard: With a Vengeance, and for pretty much the rest of his

career. And Ben Affleck wore them in both Forces

of Nature (1999) and Bounce

(2000).

There are exceptions, like Chasers (1994) and White

Squall (1996). But both films used briefs to imply the vulnerability, even

naiveté, of their young male characters.

Chasers

But while briefs continued to outsell boxers in real life

(and continue to, if barely), boxers were suddenly the undies of choice for men

in the movies — and the baggier the better.

Next page! Foreign

films “go there”!

Foreign Films

Foreign filmmakers have long treated men in their underwear

differently than American filmmakers. “American society has generally been

constrained by all the Puritans that the Europeans had the good sense to kick

off their continent centuries ago,” Duralde says. “Europeans are, in general,

less torqued up about nudity and sexuality than Americans in general are, so

they’re allowed to be both more matter-of-fact and more sexual with their

screen nudity.”

Sometimes the scenes of guys in their underwear are very

matter-of-fact, as in the innocent French coming-of-age story Wild Reeds (1994), the bittersweet story

of a love triangle between a gay boy, a straight boy, and a straight girl.

And sometimes the underwear scenes have a deliberate

eroticism, even a deliberately gay eroticism, as in the films of the openly gay

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. In Labyrinth

of Passion (1982) and Law of Desire

(1987), he introduced the world to a very hot, frequently undies-clad Antonio

Banderas.

Labyrinth of Passion/Law of Desire

Despite critical and popular success (including Oscars for All About My Mother [1999] and Talk to Her [2002]),

Almodóvar continues to portray the male body both realistically and erotically

with little regard for American sensibilities, most recently in Bad Education (2004).

Bad Education

Where Things Hang

Today

As with so many things, men’s underwear in the movies isn’t

quite as simple as it has seemed in the past. Boxers remain the rule in most

studio films while briefs are used mostly for comic effect, as with William H.

Macy’s hapless Dudley in Wild Hogs (2007).

“Most mainstream [American] movies still have a ridiculous

level of giggle factor,” Duralde says.

Still, it’s undeniable that we’re also experiencing a return

to the eroticization of the male form. Somehow the Greek epic 300 (2006) managed to draw in hoards of adolescent

heterosexual males without alienating them with the fact that it’s basically

two hours of oiled bodybuilders strutting around in Speedo-like loincloths.

300

Next page! What’s

happening now!

Meanwhile, independent cinema increasingly gives openly gay

men a chance to feature their own unapologetic, and specifically gay,

sensibilities in movies like Quinceañera

(2006), East Side Story (2006), the Boys’ Shorts (1993) series, and even an actual gay teen sex comedy, Another Gay Movie (2006). When it comes

to boxers or briefs, is it any wonder what these gay directors tend to choose?

Another Gay Movie

What will men in the movies be wearing under their clothes

in the years to come, and how will directors be showcasing it?

Whatever the answer, you can bet that gay and bisexual moviegoers

will be watching closely.

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