Why do you never see adverts on TV for men's underwear? Just seem to be loads for women's underwear

[OrlandoWoolf]

Seems like most adverts for clothing companies seem to have at least one model wearing just underwear.

But obviously men don't need to buy underwear.

Hugh Dennis had it in a skit he did.

Women get a whole range of underwear, men get a "rack of pants".

There is an advert in the tube station near work at the mo which apparently appears to be advertising a sexy woman. I am not sure who these types of ads are aimed at TBH. I imagine they are to persuade men to go to the shop to buy expensive, impractical and incorrectly sized underwear for their female partners over xmas? It's all a bit odd.

And why there aren't ads with hot young men in skin tight pants to persuade people in relationships with men to buy expensive pants, is anyone's guess.

Or not, actually

David Beckham lives in his pants.

And damn fine he looks in them too

In these types of conversations someone often pops up and states that woman have more aesthetically pleasing bodies than men FACT and that is why there are provocative / semi naked images of women everywhere and in fact just bits of women's bodies pictured everywhere.

I maintain that people who say that are singularly dense, as what they are actually saying is invariably that as a heterosexual man they like to look at women's bodies and they don't want to look at men's bodies.

The idea that people who are sexually attracted to men might find men's bodies infinitely more appealing to look at than women's just seems to totally pass them by

You must have missed the David Beckham advert he did for his H&M underwear collection then.

And there are certainly plenty of print ads for male underwear, with perfectly toned male models* with six packs, an image that is just as unrealistic as the females they use for female underwear ads.

I'm thinking about TV ads. Such as M&S and other clothing shops.

I did see the Beckham ad.

Ah yes

Of course the occasional ad where a man is in his pants totally counteracts the tide of images of women and it's all totally equal innit.

True.

TBF though I haven't seen any pics of men in their pants on the tube lately. I expect there is one though, on tube no. 346 out of Morden or something, so that like totally makes it all fair and even.

I'd do anything to see a man in pants

Oh well apparently there are a wealth of images in print if you are interested. This will of course involve seeking them out, rather than being able to look at them every few minutes as you go about your daily business.

I still think it's totes fair though.

it is all about what sells. Both men and women buy women's underwear - the market is therefore bigger. We also buy underwear for special occasions, for a gift, because we want to treat ourselves. men buy underwear because their old ones have holes in.

Why advertise something which men will buy once in a blue moon (or which their mums or wives buy for them out of necessity) when women will buy much more and they get a better margin out of it. Little scraps of material designed to hardly cover anything and we pay a fortune for it.

Any marketing executive would call it a no brainer.

It is because women are taught that they have to wear "sexy" underwear to look attractive for a man. Men are taught, that unless they are gay, they can wear what underwear they want and a woman will still be sexually attracted to them.

So I was watching I'm a celeb last night when some young man wandered by in very tight pink pants. If they had them in another colour I would definitely buy them for DH. But I have no idea where to buy them, which brand they are, or whether they come in other colours.

I though women bought most of men's pants for them. So why, given that I'm the target group, do advertisers not target their ads towards me?

I suspect those marketing executives who think that it's not worth advertising a product that women buy to women are indeed lacking in brains.

Underwear from Kmart modelled by men

Seems to be a peculiarly British thing. The Germans and the French seem to have no hang-ups about advertising (and selling) men's underwear.

The point that's being missed with the German and French examples is that we have British ones too in catalogues. I believe the OP was talking about random adverts, say, about chocolate or a new kind of soap powder which has a woman prancing about in her knickers. I'm sure there are exceptions, but there does tend to be a higher number of women in their undies than men in adverts unrelated to the actual underwear.

Apologies if I have the wrong end of the stick though.

The only reason I could think of is that women buy more sexy (ie expensive) underwear than men. Posh mens underwear does of course exist, but if most mens underwear is more of a functional low budget product, then it's not going to have the margin to pay for TV advertising.

In which case, the obvious solution (although I'm not sure what the problem is in the first place) is for women to stop buying it.

Long before I knew you lovely people I had a strop in Sainsbury's that I dropped too fast under pressure because I didn't know anyone who wouldn't have thought I was a bit of a nit.
I was trying to buy stockings*, to wear in real life, as leg coverings rather than sex aids, so I went to the part of the shop where there was a huge long photo of a nearly naked woman wearing stockings and suspenders. I think this was in Jan. There were pairs of tights and some socks but no stockings. I asked about this and was told "we only have those for Christmas." I managed to stop myself saying "but stockings are for life, not just for Christmas!" but instead I asked them why the huge naked photo of stockings was anything but pointless objectification if they don't even sell the stockings. It was just a random photo of belly and thighs next to a row of black cotton ankle socks. Weird.

anyway I was made to feel like a fool and just went away to the chemists to get some canesten instead, probably

*sorry about the TMI but I adjusted badly and slowly to corporate life and had some ill effects from encasing my crotch in nylon daily