Lingerie: why I'd rather have it on my floor than on you

For a little while now, I’ve wanted to write about underwear. Women’s underwear. It’s a bit of a delicate subject for me, because the truth is that I don’t find lingerie particularly sexy. This has exasperated various partners over the years, who have gone to the trouble of kitting themselves out in expensive, matching sets from high-end boutiques, only to have me barely give the whole ensemble a second glance before stripping it off them. It’s also caused me to question my own sensibilities, from time-to-time; I find myself wondering whether – like a failure to appreciate opera, or a lack of interest in foreign food – it betrays some deep-rooted aesthetic deficiency. A poverty of the soul – or of the imagination, at least.

Before getting into the reasons for my relative indifference, I should say that in a wider sense, I do appreciate the erotic value that underwear holds. It’s often a key part of the virtuous circle that sits behind the concept of sexiness: for many women, wearing nice lingerie makes them feel sexy, and the sexier they feel, the more attractive their partner or partners are likely to find them; this, in turn, generally makes them feel even sexier, and the cycle continues. Lingerie is not the only driver of this, of course, but to my mind that’s where its true value has always resided: as something for women to enjoy, and to feel good about, rather than as a tool with which to entice or seduce men.

In terms of its more direct sexual appeal, my ambivalence probably stems from the fact that I don’t really buy any of the lines trotted out by lingerie advocates. These tend to cluster around three basic truisms: first, that mystery is sexy; second, that even once you’ve seen a partner naked for the first time, it’s good to leave a little to the imagination in future; and third, that well-chosen, well-fitted underwear can enhance a woman’s natural beauty and make various bits of her body look even better.

The most interesting of those, and the one I’ve spent the most time thinking about today, is the first one. It’s interesting because I suspect that if I’d been writing this fifty years ago, or even fifteen years ago, I might have felt the same way. To see a woman in her underwear would have been a rare thing, and to find out what’s underneath it, even more so. Now though? Now that ability to hint at something more, something lying just out of reach, has been eroded by an exponential increase in the number of sexual images that the average person is exposed to. Certainly I feel desensitized to female nudity, and not just because of my own direct experience with women.

I feel like that because every day I see billboards, magazine ads, newspaper photos, and countless online images that feature women in their underwear, or indeed out of it. What was thrilling and risqué even when I was a teenager is now commonplace and even dull. The same increasingly applies to cock shots, I’m sure: if you’re a relatively tech-savvy woman, and have been some shade of single for a significant proportion of the last decade, the chances are you’ve received dozens, or even hundreds of photos of dicks, of all shapes and sizes. Maybe the first few shocked you, or turned you on, or grossed you out, or whatever, but by now, I doubt that’s true unless there’s something exceptional about the photo/dick in question. I don’t know how many penises the average 30-year-old woman had seen in 1950, but I bet it’s a fraction of the 2014 figure, and while familiarity may not breed contempt, it certainly diminishes the impact.

So yes, mystery is sexy, but I no longer feel like that’s relevant to any discussion about lingerie. Not for me, anyway. In that sense I get stimulated far more effectively by what someone has on over their underwear. A tight polo-neck sweater; a pleated skirt; a dress that shows just a hint of cleavage; the right outfit on the right person, basically. The line between full nudity and nothing-but-underwear has become so thin, so blurred, that one can no longer act as a teasing preview of the other; they both lack any kind of shock value, so I’d rather just have the one that looks better.

That, to be clear, is full nudity. Tall or short, fat or thin, when I’m in bed with someone I’m there – to some extent – because I find her physically attractive, and because I want her body. I don’t want it nipped and tucked and lifted up just so by a layer of fabric. I don’t want it airbrushed in photos, and I certainly don’t want the equivalent of that when I’m looking at it in person. No, what I want is to feel her properly against me, and to be able to stroke, grab, kiss, and spank anywhere I like, in any way I like. Also, once I’m actually in bed with someone, there’s something sexy – and reassuring – about a willingness/desire to be completely naked. It suggests a healthy level of body confidence, and that’s pretty much the most reliable indicator of great sex.

Underwear can be sexy. There’s something visceral and dirty about yanking someone’s knickers to one side in a public place and fingering her, for example – and it’s way hotter than doing it to a woman who’s not wearing any. I also get a bit shivery at the thought of watching a partner get dressed in the morning, then bending her over, hiking up her skirt, and fucking her – partly because morning sex FTW, but it’s mainly that I love sending her off to work in the knowledge that she’ll spend the first part of the day with come oozing down out of her and soaking her underwear. Occasionally it’s so context-dependent that the type and quality of the underwear is completely irrelevant: a few years ago I had a girlfriend who I played squash with, and after a few months of sweaty, post-game sex, I realized that the mere sight of her fraying, faded sports bra was enough to turn me on, whether it was hanging on the washing line or wrapped around her tits. So yeah, when it does get me going, it’s not about how much it cost or even what it looks like: it’s who’s wearing it, what we’re doing, and how it’s being used.

Does it matter that, in isolation, even the nicest underwear on the hottest body just doesn’t do it for me? I don’t think so…as I wrote at the start, it’s more about what it does for the person wearing it. If great lingerie makes her feel sexier, then I’m certainly not going to object: I’ll just hope that she’s equally happy for me to remove it, because that’s the bit that turns me on.