How to convert boxer shorts into comfortable men's underwear

Maybe you don't like jockey-style underpants because they make you sweaty, itchy, or you get rubbed in the wrong places.

Or you have trouble with boxer shorts because the seams are rough and they bother you as you swing along walking. Or when you sit down, the boxers don't give you any padding against rough seams in your jeans or other pants.

Try this:

1. Buy a pair of boxer shorts with long legs. Make sure they're a stretch fabric and that they feel floppy. (Stretch fabric is knit-woven in tiny loops, like your socks. Unlike your jeans or business shirts, which have a loom-like weave and don't stretch at all.)

2. Look down from the top:

3. Cut across the bottom part. One scissor cut is all you need:

4. Cut off any buttons.

5. If the outside of the underwear looks more comfortable than the inside, turn it inside-out.

6. Put on this bottomless garment. Rotate what used to be the front part so that it's on one hip or the other. The legs have now turned into flaps at your front and back. (You may be reminded of Tarzan.)

7. Check where any seams run. Then rotate the underwear a little more to the left or right, if you need to. In other words, the old front of the shorts may not be exactly over your left or right hip.

8. Put on your pants, adjust the underwear flaps to suit you, and go for a test walk. And also see what it's like to sit.

Note: you can do all this with some types of short, summer-style pyjama bottoms. But avoid flannel ones. They aren't stretch fabric and don't work well.


Copyright 2011 by Martin Jones