Boxer shorts

I’ve just spent the last two hours wandering around Copenhagen in search of boxer shorts. This is my personal nightmare.

For me, clothes shopping is a stressful activity. The slow walk around a shop gently fondling a leather jacket and admiring the soles of a pair of shoes can get very tedious after the eighth store. Asking a staff member each time where the men’s section is while surrounded by scantily clad female manikins seems to be a right of passage when clothes shopping.

I hate it. I can never find what I want, and I feel constantly watched by some teenage store assistant. The pinnacle of stressful clothes shopping, however, is the search for underwear.

The main problem I have is that, simply, it’s embarrassing. Underwear companies seem to pride their marketing success on how much cock they can reveal to the consumer without actually scaring small children. This is what I noticed in the first shop I entered, the fashionable Magasin du Nord, which I think might be the Danish equivalent of Harrods.

The department store is enormous, and it took me quite a while just to locate the men’s section – having gotten lost in the kitchen appliances department. I found an entire half a floor dedicated to underwear. It was hell. Each brand has its own little shelf with packs of underwear from loose cotton pants to the man thong, which is basically just a knob bag.

To make matters worse, a manikin of a guy’s midriff sits atop of each shelf. I’ve not seen so many arses in one room since the Leeds University Medic Society held a Friday social in the student union.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as metrosexual as the next guy. If people want to reveal the contours of their penises to the world then that’s fine by me. What I do have a problem with is, as I enter the underwear section, an attractive Danish girl comes up to me and asks if I need help with anything. The embarrassment is almost too much. I mumble in English that I’m “just browsing”, but that just sounds like I’m there to ogle at the manikins.

Anyway, I get away from the staff member and find a private corner of the department where I can browse without interruption. This is where I encounter my second problem: the picture of the modelled boxers on the front of the pack. Why is it always some rippling, muscular Adonis staring back at me? Does anyone actually look like this? Does anyone genuinely stand with their pelvis thrust so far forward it could divert oncoming traffic? Take a look at this guy for example. No man actually looks like this unless he’s rolled a pair of socks and shoved them down his pouch.

My embarrassment comes from the fact that, if I pick up some boxers with a strong guy and a bulging knob on the front of the packet, it looks as though I want to emulate that guy. Underwear manufacturers seem to assume that the idiot customer’s mentality will be ‘if I buy these pants, I’ll look like that guy and get all the ladies’. I therefore look vain and yet insecure if I proceed to the checkout where that lovely Danish girl waits and make my purchase. She’d surely snigger and make me feel all queasy inside – not worth it.

To be honest I got scared in Magasin du Nord, and so I left. There were too many people near me. Underwear shopping should be a private affair. The danger of someone seeing me nonchalantly starring at tightly fitted male pelvises for twenty minutes is one I simply cannot risk.

I carried on my walk around Copenhagen in search of a cheap, non-fashionable clothes shop. However, every store I entered had the same branded pants with misshapen willies glaring out. All I want is something comfortable. I don’t want to expose the brand of my pants to the world as though it somehow makes me more attractive to suggest I can afford luxury under garments.

The pinnacle of ‘luxury’ pants seems to be from the Björn Borg collection. In every store I entered, there was Björn staring back at me. I wouldn’t mind, but at 350 kr. per two-pack, that’s a bit extreme. That’s roughly £19 per pair. How good can a pair of boxer shorts be? For that price I want a guarantee that the child labourer in China who made them at least got a mid-morning coffee break.

There is no way in hell I would pay £19 for some underwear. I feel sorry for the Danes who I assume have no other choice than to buy them. Luckily for me, I stumbled across some plain, black, probably boring but definitely comfortable, non-restrictive boxers in the supermarket (large, naturally).

As you can see, there’s no penis. There’s no six-pack. There’s no embarrassment.

They’ll do me. I didn’t have to seek assistance or stare at a cock. If they don’t fit me then that’s fine, they’re cheap. Now that would be a kick in the bollocks: £19 for some underwear only to get home and realise that fat arse of yours does not mirror the toned rump of the model on the packet. Nineteen quid to tell you you’re a porker? Nah.