Pardon Me, Are Those Your Underpants?

strangers get a look at your underpants was something to be avoided except in emergencies. Adolescent boys thumbed eagerly through catalogs for thrills now available on page 5 of the daily newspaper. Everyone knew they were there but only your closest acquaintances were allowed to examine them.

Sometime in the past few years all this has changed. Underpants have mysteriously transformed from an embarrassing, carefully-concealed necessity to an item of ostentatious attire. What once was out of sight is now impossible to ignore.

We see boxers worn high under pants worn low-a circumstance which would have been shocking only a few years back, but which seems to have evolved along with the baggy look to the state where boxers may soon be worn as pants. Where would you put your keys and change then?

The problem has become most obvious in the case of women's attire, where on any given day one can expect to see a dozen or more frilly waistbands peeking out of strategically-positioned jeans, or, more recently, jeans specifically made and marketed to capitalize on the desire to reveal one's most intimate belongings.

Sometimes you see modest briefs, usually advertising their maker on a half-inch elastic stripe, other times items from the lingerie catalog, lacy, red or black, creeping an inch or more above where there ought to be a belt keeping things in order. When the young lady has to tie her shoe or pick up a dropped item, you often see far more. Decorum has been tossed not only out the window, but all the way into the alley.

In advanced cases all you see is a rubber band fastened to a scrap of fabric, which makes a breathtaking plunge into an area good taste forbids me to describe.

You may prefer to discount my position on this matter as curmudgeonly or anachronistic, you might even accuse be of being a puritan shocked at what's considered decent and acceptable by today's standards­­-of measuring modern mores by outdated rules.

But that's not it at all.

My problem is that what used to take weeks or even months to discover, endless research missions which might or might not disclose results, now can be determined by a casual glance at the lunch counter. In short, one of life's great mysteries, one of the eternal questions which make our existence a thing of mystery and wonder, has been reduced from a tantalizing question to an everyday fact. Strangers are looking at your underpants.

Whether your hips are thick or thin, heavy or light, dark or pale, much of the allure they carry is embodied in not knowing specifically what you are wearing on them. In the same way that a nude model is proper subject matter for a figure-drawing class while a scantily-clad one can be provocative, scandalous or outrageous. It's more interesting if you have to guess.

Maybe it's all part of sound-bite politics, three-week wars and movie-star politicians. Today's citizen lacks the patience to find out the facts the old-fashioned way, and those in possession of the facts would rather dazzle us with tantalizing hints which promise more than they deliver. For my money, the mystery is more than half the fun, I don't want to know what color your underpants are. Well, I do, but not until we've gotten to know each other a little better. We'd all be a little more at ease if you pulled your pants up.