Acquired Tastes XLII: Jock Straps

There’s something about that pouch; the shape, the texture of the material, the wide waistband and those twin straps which leave the ass exposed that has long fascinated many a gay kinkster.

An example of perfect clothing engineering; the jock strap, by design, is efficient, effective, and sexy as hell. The pouch serves as an appealing appetizer or teaser for an oral bottom’s mouth, while those back straps typically flatter one’s ass and provide a top with literal handles to manipulate his willing bottom.  

Long associated with male athletics and physical fitness, the jock strap has garnered considerable allure and mystique, fueling many a sexually-charged imagination. And nothing evokes lust more than the visage of a nicely rounded, full to the brim pouch or the sight of a pair of perfectly shaped butt orbs as framed by those two rear support straps.

Obtaining one’s first jock strap used to be a rite of passage for many decades. However, due to the rise of the boxer brief and other similar clothing that helps ensure scrotal support, their use has declined in recent years.

Yet, they continue to play a significant part in gay male culture. Why?

Acquired Tastes XLII: Jock Straps

Scope of Activity

An examination of the past objectification and continuing popularity of the jock strap among gay males.

The Official Line

(From Wikipedia)

The jockstrap was invented in 1874 by C. F. Bennett on behalf of Chicago sporting goods company, Sharp & Smith. It was to provide comfort and support for bicycle jockeys working the cobblestone streets of Boston. In 1897 Bennett's newly-formed Bike Web Company patented and began mass-producing the Bike Jockey Strap.

The Bike Web Company later became known as the Bike Company. Bike, until 2003, was a stand-alone company. In that year, the company and its trademarks were purchased by Russell Athletic. Russell Athletic continued to produce jockstraps using the Bike brand and logos until 2017 when they retired the brand. Russell had become a Fruit-of-the-Loom subsidiary, and Fruit-of-the-Loom is owned by and part of Berkshire Hathaway

Today, jockstraps are still worn mostly by adolescent and adult men for sports, weightlifting, medical purposes and for recovery from injury or surgery for such conditions as hematocele, inguinal hernia, hydrocele, or spermatocele.

Jockstraps have also become popular as a form of lingerie for men, particularly among gay and bisexual men.

Psychological Aspects

According to self-appointed sexual guru/expert Dan Savage, our kinks are hard-wired and their specific source may or may not be obvious or easily identified. That said, such kinks are virtually impossible to ignore, deny, or do away with.

The sexualization of an inanimate object, such as a piece of clothing, in this case the jock strap, qualifies as such a kink. This, in turn, explains the proliferance and enduring popularity of jock strap-centric porn and blogs. It seems that, since their invention, jock straps have been and remain a long established kink icon, particularly among the gay male community.

The sexualization of the jock strap stems from the same psycho-sexual impetus as the fetishism of locker rooms and athletic equipment: that of the idealized male, ie: men who are  athletic, muscular, masculine. For these reasons, jock straps play an important part in, not just gay porn, but also personalized role play (player/coach), where power dynamics and idealized masculinity are often a factor.  

My Experience

Back in the day, one of the rites of passage in the development of a young male was the purchase of your first jock strap. If you were fortunate enough to have a mother or father who took care of such things for you, good for you. I did not. Living in a small town, that meant trekking to the local mens clothing store, the only place I could buy one.

The brothers that owned and ran this independent mens store, were known dickheads. Even though they were big fish in a tiny, tiny pond, that did not stop them from lording their power over anyone not as well-off as they were. Enter me. When I finally worked up the courage to ask them for a jock strap, my request was met with much laughter and a number of off-colored jokes. These fat fucks and their friends had a grand old time pointing out that at 11 years of age, I couldn’t possibly have anything between my legs in need of protecting. It was a humiliating experience, one-tempered with time and only made a tad more tolerable in light of the fact that both brothers, due to their rotundness, suffered numerous heart attacks and once a mall opened in a nearby town, their days as business men were numbered.   

But this is hardly the origin of my love affair with jock straps (although, it may be at the heart of my desire to be sexually humiliated).   

As well-documented in many of the posts on this blog, my appreciation of the jock strap has endured to the present, originating during my time as a football manager/towel boy for the varsity football team at my high school when I was in 7th Grade.

I will always wonder what it was about my tiny self that attracted the attention of the football coach. At the time, I was super shy, had only two friends, was non-athletic, and had not physically matured at all. Physically, I was a tiny imp, navigating my way from my locker to various classrooms.

I was flattered to be asked and for the adult attention. It would also offer me a way out of going home directly after school, which, in light of my home life at that time, was beneficial to my well-being. Who could have predicted the Pandora’s box of kink this one opportunity would open?

My life as a pre-adolescent perv was about to begin!

I was all-eyes and ears… and nose, taking in all the sights, sounds and smells being in a locker room with a pack of 16-18 year old males had to offer. And the coaches! They were jovial and fatherly AND strict and discipline-oriented. Plus, I got to see them naked. Yes, I got to see their adult male wieners!

Somehow, all of this sensory overload led me to connect their jock straps (mandatory for anyone participating in athletic activity or physical education at my high school) with whatever emotional, psychological, hormonal stimuli my young brain was receiving. This is when my love affair with mens underwear and jock straps began.

My first year as a football manager, I was eager, enthused and a real cheerleader. The team and coaches all treated me like a little mascot and I ate up the attention. I ran errands, took care of the players’ equipment (oh, my), and handed out towels to each player after they showered (oh, my, oh, my!).

Once, a very popular player arrived a tad late for game time. In his rush, he had forgotten his jock strap. He lived close to the school, but the coaches had already begun their pregame talk, so he asked me to run to his house and ask his mom for his jock strap. I had a huge crush on this player as he was one of the few non-Caucasians on the team and smelled wonderful. I can still picture his dick to this day. So, I was only too happy to help him out. I remember how embarrassed his mother seemed and when she came back to the door to hand it to me, she had placed it in a brown paper lunch bag, gingerly offering it through a crack of her front door, as if she was handing me a disgusting, embarrassing thing. Which, of course, in young mind translated it being something sexual - because, at that time, for me, sex was above all else, embarrassing.    

By my second year, my body was rapidly developing and hormone-infused. I’d also learned to masturbate during the summer. That’s when my true perv took shape and got to run amok.

I would sneak back into the locker room while the team was on the field practicing. It became my habit to check all the underwear of the coaches and players (these were the innocent days when no one put a lock on their locker). I would examine them and eventually began stripping naked, trying them on and masturbating while wearing them. Such a violation of trust! I was super careful not to get any of my spooge on their clothing. Heavenly, were the days when someone would miss practice… because that meant their soiled jock strap was hanging in their locker. Of course, on my tiny frame, their jocks and underwear seemed huge, but that merely fed into my fantasy that all these men were super potent and amply hung.     

By my third and final year, I was a total mess. Someone younger had been recruited to ‘help’ me and the fear of replacement combined with my raging hormones helped create a masturbatory monster bent on leaving his mark (DNA) on this particular athletic program before retiring. Needless to say, by this time, jock straps had become a permanent ‘object of my erection’.

To this day, not only do I own a few, but I also seek out guys who are into them, The latter is a very recent development. Even though I have had no trouble writing about my obsession with jock straps, I could never admit to anyone face-to-face what a turn on a man in a jock is for me or how much I dig the straps themselves. But now I know at least two dudes who are as into it as I am, so I have added it to the freek flag I freely wave.

Unfortunately, I no longer look that good in a jock. The front is the same as it ever was, but, what they hell is going on in the back and on the sides? Sadly, the body, as it ages, does some strange things that not even regular exercise can counteract. For example, I don’t have overt love handles, nor am I overweight, but despite my daily crunches and healthy vegetarian diet, I cannot fight gravity. The large elastic ban that goes around the middle now creates a sort of side droop which is not something most people find very attractive.

Also, my ass… sigh. What was once a really sweet badonkadonk has withered into a pair of less-than-completely-full butt balloons. Oh, the muscles remain, but the skin has stretched, leaving each cheek with a bit of a skin flap at the bottom of my, ummm, bottom. If I bend over, all is good, or if I stand on my tippy-toes, again, all good. But standing upright? Oh, lord, nobody wants to see that. So, I abstain and, when naked in the presence of others, live in a cloud of optimistic delusion. But wear a strap? No, way. I don’t need to be calling attention to something I, myself, don’t find attractive.

My Conclusion

Even though they are no longer the go-to for athletic scrotal support, the popularity of the jock strap will continue, thanks to pervs like myself. However, given that men are now wearing a different style of foundation garment in the locker room, I wonder if future generations will ever associate it with anything except gay porn. Time will tell.

In the meantime, pervs like me will keep the tradition alive in real time, by either wearing them or appreciating them as worn by others and they will remain fixtures at places like gay bathhouses and gay bars (jock strap nights remain a monthly event at a bar, here, in the Twin Cities), thus exposing them to future generations. Plus, there is the occasional relaunch or anniversary edition of a vintage model which may also serve to spark the imaginations of younger generations.

For those old enough to remember when jock straps were a mandatory part of a young man’s development, they remain an enduring symbol of idealized manliness, thus securing their place as an active gay kink icon.