TIDBITS – THIRD-WORLD UNDERWEAR

One thing you may have noticed if you’ve ever left the country for somewhere significantly crappier is that, while a lot of places may lag pretty far behind in things like transit and child mortality and not building settlements around open sewers as if they were Venetian canals, they are light-years ahead of us in other departments, like underwear. Maybe all the years spent cranking out low-budget “intimates” for the West has fueled some sort of secret well-made undie-race, or maybe they’re just saving all the good ones for themselves—in any event every pair we’ve ever tried on from abroad seriously makes any of American Apparel’s jersey-knit nonsense feel like a construction-paper g-string held together with tape. And that’s not even getting into all the bells and whistles they’ve thought to add, like condom pockets and glow-in-the-dark cartoon dicks and children’s briefs that say “Stripper.” What the hell have we got to compete against that, Joe Boxer? Pathetic. Aside from their general superiority, foreign underwear can also teach you valuable lessons about their country’s culture…

For instance, to become a man in Judaism you have to spend two years learning Hebrew and give a big speech in front of your family, then you get a huge party and thousands of dollars. This seems like a sweet deal if you’re a goy, where the process generally involves going to war or knocking a girl up, but did you know in Colombia all you have to do is look sort of gay between getting out of bed and putting on your pants?
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