A man with battered underwear is a keeper.
Disclaimer: Please note the operative word is battered, not torn or tattered. Now that I've got that out of the way, below are reasons why Kenyan men like battered underwear.
It is a small thing, but it speaks a lot about ourselves.
Broken into boxers
Just like our shoes and leather jackets, our boxers need to be broken in for them to fit us perfectly and perform optimally. We won't give up our broken into boxers, despite their sorry state.
Nope. Not after all the work we've put into making them comfortable and wearable. We wear them out until they become virtually unwearable. And then we still wear them! Ladies, that's just the male psyche.
See that brother who's cleaned up nicely in a bespoke Brioni suit? I can bet my last red cent that, underneath that six-figure thread, he's wearing a boxer he has broken into. And he's got no shame in his underwear game.
Playing favourites
We all have clothes or shoes we love dearly. Although we have truckloads of clothing items, we wear these favourites daily.
The same principle applies to boxers. There are some boxers we love more than others. They may have seen better days, but we still wear them down to their last thread. The more battered, the better.
A matter of pride
In most neighbourhoods, garbage is collected on a specified day of the week. The MO is for residents to place their garbage bags in a designated area, usually outside their apartment gate.
Garbage scavengers, who always roam with packs of dogs, have this weird habit of dressing their dogs in discarded clothes, which they have fished from garbage bags.
That is why we wear our boxers until they're unwearable, so much so that even a stray dog, when their human tries to force it to wear a trashed boxer, will lodge a formal complaint with the Kenya Society for the Protection & Care of Animals (KSPCA) for gross animal abuse.
No man wants to see a stray dog sashaying, tail in the air, in their old discarded boxers. Such things wreck our pride. Can you imagine how it feels to be told you handed down your boxers, which protected your most vulnerable parts, to a stray dog? That's a blow that's enough to kill a man's self-esteem.
Keeper's mentality
Ladies, if your man loves his battered boxers, he's sending you a subtle message that he'll never leave you, regardless of the stretch marks, wrinkles, and spare tyres that time and life have blessed you with. Yup, sisters, those are blessings, not curses.
A man with battered underwear is a keeper. And his battered underwear is doing the talking. You ought to reply like a Proverbs 31 woman, using a needle and a thread.
Wearing battered boxers is an acrobatic feat. A man must cautiously manoeuvre his feet and toes through the gaping holes and hanging threads. One wrong move and you'll hear the telltale “trrrr” sound. Which means the boxer has acquired another tear. Or the man has got a cramp from that laborious exercise.
That's where a Proverbs 31 woman comes in. As verse 19 states: “She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff” … to repaireth her husband's battered underwear.
Okay. I've added the last bit. But, ladies, you get the drift, right? Kazi kwenyu.
Mr Wasonga works in the world’s oldest profession: creation. He’s an imagineer and screenwriter, with several original works in the cards.
