Bronzer? Six-packs? Hair waving in the fake breeze? Nope. None of those here.
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If you’ve seen men’s underwear ads – and really, who hasn’t – then you’ve probably noticed something.
There are an awful lot of finely-tuned bodies. Whether or not they are air-brushed a la Victoria’s Secret or the infamous Justin Bieber photoshop flap, debate that all you like. Get into the underwear ads targeted at gay men and the bodies get even more unrealistic. Chiseled, hairless, eternally young.
And make no mistake, that’s who this ad and these undies are targeted to.
Enter the new video by YouTube personality Davey Wavey, who’s not shy about showing of his gym-buffed body. That’s what adds a little bit of cool to his ad for his Dirtyfit line of underwear.
He may be an internet celebrity, but Davey Wavey could get pretty much any body he wanted to model his stuff, and when you get to the actual catalog, the images (borderline NSFW) are much more typical.
But his video features people who look more like someone you’d stand next to on the elevator or in line at the grocery and less like someone who spent every waking hour keeping themselves in underwear model form. Even the sound is surprising…watch and I guarantee at least one voice will make you pause.
And these models get to have voices, talking about why the are there and how the modeling makes them feel.
Now, the chances of this ad, or the bodies in it, ever making it into the mainstream are pretty slim. While women’s magazines, websites, and ads are taking steps towards integrating more body types into their images and advertising, and once a year Sports Illustrated puts out its “look-at-the-diversity-in-athletes” bodies issue, it’s been a much slower shift for guys. The tan, muscular ideal still rules, while the pale dude with some extra pounds around the middle is largely invisible, particularly in the gay men’s community (bears, we know you’re there, and thank you.)
h/t queerty.com