When I first started wearing men’s thong underwear, I genuinely thought people would be able to tell.

Not just if they saw something obvious, like a whaletale high above my jeans, but I had this strange belief that it would somehow be obvious anyway. Like there was no real hiding it. At the time, I honestly felt like people had some kind of awareness I didn’t understand, like x-ray vision, as if they’d just know something was different about me.

The first time I properly tested that fear was at a Halloween party.

I had owned the thong for a while but had been too scared to wear it outside my flat. It stayed hidden, something I would try on briefly at home and then overthink afterwards. But I eventually decided that if I was ever going to wear it out, Halloween was the easiest excuse. If anyone somehow noticed, I could just say it was a hidden part of the costume, a surprise.

Even so, I was terrified.

At the start of the evening, I was extremely self-conscious. I remember constantly thinking about what I was wearing and imagining worst-case scenarios where someone somehow detected it, judged me, or asked a question I wouldn’t be able to answer comfortably.

But something interesting happened as the night went on.

We were playing games, moving around a lot, and eventually heading out to a club. It was on the walk there that I realised something had shifted. I’d stopped actively thinking about it. Not because I’d decided to be brave, but because my attention had just moved onto everything else.

And this really surprised me.

Because I also realised something else at the same time: during all that movement, all that physical activity, nobody had reacted differently to me. Nobody had said anything. Nobody had looked at me in a way that suggested anything was wrong or different.

That created a strange internal conflict.

Part of me still expected that I had been “found out” and people just hadn’t said anything yet. But another part of me started to form a completely new thought:

Maybe nobody could actually tell.

That thought came with a wave of fear at first. If someone had seen, what would they think? What would it say about me? I had all the usual assumptions in my head about judgement, masculinity, sexuality—things I now realise had very little to do with the actual reality of underwear and everything to do with social conditioning.

But then something else happened. That fear quickly softened into acceptance.

Nothing in the external world had changed. People were still behaving the same. Conversations were the same. The night continued exactly as normal. And that created a very simple but powerful realisation:

Even if someone had noticed, it didn’t seem to matter.

That experience didn’t just reduce my anxiety in that moment, it changed how I approached everything afterwards.

The next shift came later, in a much more mundane situation.

I was doing the washing in my flat. I’d been hiding my underwear out of habit, putting it away discreetly, overthinking even the act of drying it by hanging thongs up to dry in my cupboard. But one day I came back and my flatmate had already hung everything up to dry for me. Including the thongs.

I remember the immediate spike of embarrassment. That instant thought of: this is it, she’s seen it, she’s told everyone else in the flat. I assumed she would think something about me—maybe that I was gay, or into something sexual or unusual, or that it meant something about my personality.

But nothing happened.

No reaction. No comment. No change in behaviour. Just normal life continuing.

Instead of reinforcing my fear, it actually did the opposite. I started to realise that most people are not analysing your underwear, or building narratives about your life based on it. They’re just too busy living their own lives.

That experience made it easier to stop worrying about strangers as well.

Over time, there were other moments too—bending down in shops, going through airport security pat-downs—situations where I was absolutely convinced someone must have seen something. But even then, nothing ever came of it. No reactions. No shifts in behaviour. No consequences.

And gradually, that changed the way I interpreted everything.

I stopped looking for “evidence” that people had noticed, because there never really was any. Instead, I became more curious than anxious. If someone did see, what actually would happen? And over time, that curiosity replaced most of the fear.

What I’ve realised is that most of the anxiety came from imagined judgement rather than actual experience. The reality was far more neutral than I expected.

But there’s still one area where that shift isn’t completely finished.

With strangers, it’s easy. There’s no context, no relationship, no ongoing meaning attached to a moment. But with people close to me, it still feels different.

The hardest part wouldn’t be someone seeing. It would be their reaction in the moment, and what they might think about me afterwards. I know logically it’s just underwear. I could explain it clearly in terms of comfort, design, and practicality. But I also recognise that social assumptions around men’s underwear choices still exist, and those are harder to control than facts.

So for me, that’s the remaining tension: not the being noticed, but the interpretation.

Because once you realise nobody notices in everyday life, the real question stops being “can people tell?” and becomes “what does it mean if they do?”

And slowly, over time, even that question starts to matter less than you think.

The Moment My Flatmate Accidentally Understood the Appeal.

At the time, I still treated men’s thongs like some kind of hidden side project. I had already gone through the first awkward stage of secretly buying one from Primark, convincing myself everyone would somehow know I owned it, wearing it briefly, panicking, then slowly coming back to the idea again later.

By this point, my flatmate already knew I owned one thong. That barrier had been broken earlier through a mixture of curiosity, joking around, and me trying to make the whole thing seem less serious than it felt in my head.

But despite that, thongs still existed in this strange category mentally: something unusual, slightly taboo, and definitely not normal men’s underwear.

Then something unexpected happened.

I Bought Him One Too

At some point during another shopping trip, I decided to buy my flatmate his own thong. Partly as a joke. Partly out of curiosity. And partly because I genuinely wanted to know whether my experience had been unique or whether someone else would react the same way physically.

Because by then I already knew something important: the actual wearing experience was nowhere near as uncomfortable as people imagine.

The mental reaction was the uncomfortable part.

The Immediate Reaction Wasn’t What I Expected

What surprised me most wasn’t that he tried it, it was how quickly his reaction changed once he actually wore it. There wasn’t some dramatic moment of horror. No “How do you wear these?” No “This is unbearable.” Instead, there was this almost confused surprise that it was… comfortable. Genuinely comfortable.

That’s what led to the line that stuck with me ever since:

“If Topman sold thongs, I think everyone would wear one.”

And honestly, that sentence perfectly captured something I had been slowly realising myself.

The Problem Was Never Really the Underwear

That comment stuck because it accidentally exposed the real issue around men’s thongs. The barrier was never the physical experience. It was branding, expectation, and stigma. If a mainstream high-street men’s clothing shop had sold thongs alongside boxers and briefs, most men would probably have viewed them completely differently.

Not as a statement. Not as something “other.” Just another underwear option.

Familiar Branding Changes Everything

The Topman comment was funny, but there was a deeper truth underneath it. People trust familiar categories. If something is sold in the “normal men’s section” by a mainstream brand next to everyday basics, then people subconsciously assume it must be socially acceptable.

But when something feels hidden away, novelty-focused, or oversexualised, you’ll automatically treat it differently before you’ve even touched the fabric.

That changes the entire emotional experience around trying them.

The Physical Reality Was Surprisingly Universal

What struck me most was that his reaction mirrored my own first experience almost exactly. Not emotionally, physically.

Less fabric. Less bunching. Less movement. A surprisingly unobtrusive back strap. The comfort itself wasn’t difficult to understand once you removed the assumptions surrounding it.

It Changed How I Thought About Stigma

Up until then, I still partly viewed my interest in thongs as something highly unusual.

But seeing someone else independently arrive at the same comfort conclusion made it harder to believe the idea that they were inherently bizarre.

It highlighted how much of the stigma came from perception rather than experience.

The Funny Thing About Men’s Thongs

The strange irony is that most people who have never worn one imagine them as extreme, uncomfortable, impractical, or purely sexual. Meanwhile, many people who actually try them end up talking about the support, how comfortable the back actually is, and forgetting they’re even wearing them

It’s a surprisingly practical conversation hidden underneath a very impractical reputation.

I still think about that Topman comment sometimes because it captured the whole subject better than most serious discussions ever could.

Not because it was making some grand statement. But because it recognised something simple. The biggest barrier to men’s thongs usually isn’t the underwear itself, it’s the idea people already formed about them before they ever tried one on.

Years later, when Topman was absorbed by Asos, they did release a line of mens thongs. With my flatmates words still ringing in my ears after all that time, I hit purchase.