Lifestyle
Sexy Lingerie for Men Is Here

As a multidisciplinary artist who explores Black and queer identification, LaQuann Dawson, 27, usually takes self-portraits from his residence and studio in Brooklyn carrying girls’s lingerie. However he discovered that the bodysuits and bottoms didn’t match properly.
“Both it will be very small or I’d discover one thing that will look good from the again,” Mr. Dawson mentioned.
As a workaround, he would put on the lingerie backward or purchase bigger sizes. Then someday, whereas scrolling by way of Instagram, he got here throughout an organization known as Leak NYC, a males’s lingerie model that makes attractive bodysuits from fishnet and different see-through supplies, with ample room up entrance. It was a revelation.
“Leak felt like a godsend,” Mr. Dawson mentioned. “They really are being considerate to a extra masculine physique, with enhances to femininity.”
Males’s lingerie is taking off amongst a self-possessed section of male shoppers searching for attractive undergarments which might be extra gender expansive than a jockstrap.
Many are by upstart manufacturers with names like Menagerié, Candyman Trend and Ciciful , usually marketed with body- and sex-positive messages. “Your gender expression is all that issues,” reads the web site for Depraved Mmm, a lingerie model in Montreal.
Mainstream manufacturers are getting in on the motion, too.
Cosabella, an Italian lingerie model based by a husband and spouse in 1983, started promoting lacy males’s briefs, semi-sheer thongs and colourful G-strings on its web site final November. “It’s half the world’s inhabitants simply when it comes to market measurement,” mentioned Guido Campello, 41, the corporate’s co-chief govt.
Mr. Campello is aware of not everybody is prepared. “There’s a section of the inhabitants that’s like, ‘Completely,’” he mentioned, referring to what he calls fashion-forward clients together with homosexual males and nonbinary individuals. “However can I convert the dudes?”
That continues to be to be seen, however he did persuade considered one of his hardest clients. “I transformed my father,” Mr. Campello mentioned, referring to the corporate’s co-founder, Ugo Campello.
Savage x Fenty, the lingerie model began by Rihanna, launched its first males’s assortment in 2020. “It bought out in 12 hours, the complete factor,” mentioned Christiane Pendarvis, the model’s chief merchandising officer. “We had been blown away.” A racy assortment with cherry-red harnesses and mesh crop tops was launched this 12 months for Valentine’s Day.
Lots of the clients, Ms. Pendarvis added, weren’t the girlfriends, companions or spouses, however the male patrons themselves. “It’s about self-expression,” she mentioned. “You need to put on some lace thong underwear? Go proper forward.”
And Fleur du Mal, an upscale lingerie line with shops in New York and Los Angeles, not too long ago launched a Fleur Pour Homme assortment, together with boxers constituted of sheer lace. The boxers bought out in two days and have a wait record of greater than 500 individuals, in accordance with Jennifer Zuccarini, the model’s founder.
Lingerie gross sales have been robust in the course of the pandemic, and lots of lingerie makers see an untapped marketplace for males that tracks one other attire pattern: the rise of gender-expansive clothes.
“Males’s lingerie is one small a part of an even bigger motion,” mentioned Francesca Muston, the vp of vogue content material at WGSN, a pattern forecasting firm. “You’ve obtained a complete era who’s simply very embracing of the inclusivity and variety inside gender. And for the style trade, for our shoppers at WGSN, it is a big deal.”
“Enormous” is a relative time period, since gender-inclusive clothes nonetheless represents lower than 1 % of all garments bought in the US, in accordance with WSGN.
Males’s lingerie will not be completely new. Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum on the Trend Institute of Know-how in New York and the writer of “Fetish: Trend, Intercourse & Energy.” traces males’s lingerie to not less than the Twenties.
In the middle of her analysis, Ms. Steele got here throughout a set of males’s underwear from Soviet Russia. She was shocked by particulars like embroidered hammers and sickles, but in addition by the delicacy of its material. “Elite males’s underwear over the course of the twentieth century was usually made out of what we consider as girls’s materials like silk,” Ms. Steele mentioned.
Within the Nineteen Seventies there was an enormous change in the way in which males’s underwear was marketed. “That’s when the sexual revolution actually went mainstream,” Ms. Steele mentioned. “In order that’s while you begin discovering Jockey advertisements after which Calvin Klein advertisements exhibiting males as sexual objects.”
She additionally cited Worldwide Male, a catalog first revealed in 1974 and sometimes known as Victoria’s Secret for guys, which featured web page after web page of male fashions in thong bikini bottoms. Ms. Steele seen it as a harbinger of underwear that overtly sexualize male our bodies. “It comes primarily from homosexual tradition, however it’s additionally popping out of simply sexual liberation usually,” she mentioned.
Louis Dorantes, 30, who based Leak NYC in 2016, thinks that we’re within the midst of one other second like that. “We’re getting into a brand new age the place male-presenting our bodies are feeling snug carrying effeminate shapes, effeminate materials that didn’t exist after I was rising up,” Mr. Dorantes mentioned. “It seems like a really courageous new world. We’re actually making an attempt to discover and push and query the binary that has restricted us for thus lengthy.”
Queer nightlife has lengthy been a spot the place gender binary stereotypes have been challenged, subverted, ignored or in any other case toyed with, and the place fashion-forward lingerie made with stretch lace, mesh and cutouts discovered a house.
“This was born on the dance ground,” mentioned Mr. Dorantes, who was a frequent clubgoer when he was a designer at Rag & Bone within the 2010s. Leak was impressed by events in New York Metropolis like Papi Juice and Inferno, the place hypersexual homosexual tradition fused with a gender-fluid vogue aesthetic. His lingerie is supposed to be worn in both the bed room or membership.
“Every part was so curated and great and exquisite,” Mr. Dorantes mentioned. “I wanted to step up what I wanted to put on, whether or not it was a delicate harness as a substitute of all of the leather-based, or the metallic available on the market, or a body-con bodysuit that will intensify my options as a male-presenting individual.”
Followers of Leak embrace Bowen Yang, 31, a participant on “Saturday Night time Stay.” “It seems like The Sisterhood of the Touring Pants however for all queer individuals,” mentioned Mr. Yang, who thought of carrying a mesh bodysuit when he attended the Critics Selection Awards final month. “Males’s lingerie is only a actually lovely approach to take energy for your self, in order for you it.”
Kennie Mas, a namesake males’s lingerie and fetish-wear model based in 2018 in Toronto, additionally got here out of the L.G.B.T. world. Latest gadgets embrace a bare-chested singlet in shiny purple, and a floral thong made from stretchy Polyester.
“The extra female the items are, I discover the extra they promote,” Mr. Mas, 28, mentioned. “Males’s lingerie or no matter you need to name it’s positively blowing up in the meanwhile.”
Some males with extra conventional tastes are additionally warming to new lingerie.
Steven Inexperienced, 28, a photographer and plus-size mannequin who lives in Kansas Metropolis, Mo., was employed to stroll within the Savage x Fenty runway present in 2020. “I by no means considered lingerie for males in any respect till I labored with them,” Mr. Inexperienced mentioned. Earlier than, he solely wore briefs by Calvin Klein or Polo Ralph Lauren, however he has since expanded his undergarment wardrobe.
Now, for what he calls “particular events” along with his spouse, he’ll go for crimson satin boxers by Savage x Fenty. “If I need to make it just a little bit extra attractive I’ll go to these, simply because the fabric’s elevated,” Mr. Inexperienced mentioned. “For males, we now have our Victoria’s Secret.”

Lifestyle
Trump plans to name himself chair of Kennedy Center, fire board members

President Trump announced Friday that he planned to take over as chair of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
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President Trump says he is taking over leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. He declared himself chairman of Washington D.C.’s long-celebrated cultural institution on Friday. In doing so, he’ll replace billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, an ally of former President Joe Biden who was set to chair until 2026.
Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote he was immediately terminating “multiple individuals” from the center’s Board of Trustees “who do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”
Trump said he would soon announce a new board, “with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” He also called out the center’s programming.
“Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”
A representative for Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of private equity giant Carlyle, said he had “no comment” about the news. But a statement from the Kennedy Center said they had received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to the board of trustees, though they were aware that board members received termination notices.

“There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members,” read the statement. “However, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center’s board.”
The statement also referred to the “strong support” the center had received throughout its history “from members of Congress and their staffs—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.” The Center has had “a collaborative relationship with every presidential administration,” the statement elaborated, with “a bi-partisan board of trustees that has supported the arts in a non-partisan fashion.”
During his first term as president, Trump did not attend the Kennedy Center’s annual gala; performing artists protested his administration and threatened to boycott Kennedy Center events at the White House.
It wasn’t immediately clear which Kennedy Center board members Trump would oust. During his presidency, Biden appointed several members to the center’s board, including former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge. TV producer Shonda Rhimes is the board’s treasurer, and musician Jon Batiste is also on the board.
According to the center’s website, President Dwight D. Eisenhower conceived of an “artistic mecca” in the nation’s capital in 1955. Eisenhower signed a law establishing the National Cultural Center, and President Kennedy then led fundraising efforts to build it. In 1964, two months after Kennedy was assassinated, the cultural center opened in his name as a “living memorial” to present classical and contemporary music, opera, dance, and other performing arts from the U.S. and around the world.
Over the years, the Center has showcased and honored many performing artists, including Fred Astaire and Marian Anderson, in 1981 to last year’s honorees, The Grateful Dead, Frances Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and the Apollo Theater.
Among those performing at the Kennedy Center this weekend are the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and a staging of the musical Schmigadoon.

Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: We had a good connection. Why did he break up with me before Valentine’s Day?

We met at the car wash. Seated in the shade, we struck up a conversation about our Thanksgivings. He asked to meet the next day at Lifeguard Tower 17 to surf. When I showed up, Jon, already in the water, waved and smiled at me. We surfed together, fulfilling a romantic dream. We laughed in between waves.
On our second date, we lunched at a Japanese restaurant, where he asked about my values and dreams. We realized how alike we were. On our third date, we held hands as we walked our rescue dogs in a park.
Two months in, he asked, “Can I propose to you after six months?”
I said, “Yes.”
Three months in, he drove me around his ideal neighborhood, asking if I could see myself living there and joking that he, his daughters and I would all watch “Chopped” together.
I wanted it all: the proposal, the neighborhood, the two daughters, him.
But Jon broke up with me — a day before Valentine’s Day — in a rambling voicemail. I was so confused that I emailed him for clarification. He wasn’t ready to settle down until his daughters left for college, and he had to overcome his ex-wife’s infidelity.
I believed we’d eventually reunite like in a rom-com: We’d paddle through waves and kiss across our surfboards.
Yet on the summer solstice, I spotted his SUV at the beach. My eyes jumped to his white surfboard and an unfamiliar blue board on top of his car. I panicked, wondering whose surfboard lay atop his.
After all, Jon had recently texted me about surfing together again. Hearing from him had appeased my bruised ego.
Spotting the surfboards piqued my curiosity. With the crowd, I remained unseen, trudging toward the water, while trying to catch sight of him and his surf partner. My annual solstice dip didn’t produce any elation. Instead, confusion and jealousy had settled in. Leaving, I spotted Jon beside a woman with a tanned body, her bikini top overflowing with D cups above a toned belly. I never saw her face.
With his texts, Jon had buttered me up: how great my cooking is, how nice I am to my dogs, how cute I am. Then he called, and I answered. He wanted to surf, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I needed more mea culpa. And just like that, he disappeared.
But there he snuggled beside a perfect body — a far cry from my petite, curvy self.
Days later, Stacey, a CrossFit acquaintance, posted a picture standing beside a surfboard with a red stripe down the middle, a board like Jon’s.
A few weeks later, she messaged me, admitting she was dating Jon, and saying if he showed up at CrossFit functions, she didn’t want me to be surprised. Two days later, I’d be volunteering at an event Stacey was competing in.
She signed off with “I hope there are no hard feelings.”
I responded: “Absolutely no hard feelings. Kick some ass in your competition.” And I added a smiley face emoji.
The relief of knowing lasted 20 minutes. I thought I’d obsess less now, instead, a new problem presented itself: Why her and not me?
At the event, Stacey complimented me on how cute I looked. (I worked cleavage, braided pigtails and a trucker hat.) A minor victory for me. When our eyes met, Jon and I nodded at each other from across the competition area.
As I was leaving, he signaled for me to stop. After amicable chitchat, he asked why he never saw me around.
“I was surprised when I saw your car at San Onofre,” I told him. That’s a surf spot about 20 miles south of our local spot. When we dated, we never left our ZIP Code.
“Why didn’t we see you out there? You should have said hi.”
I must have made a face because he added, “We’re all adults. You should have surfed with us.”
“I’m not going to surf with you two.”
“It’s not like we’re all kumbaya out there,” Jon said.
About a week later, while walking on the beach, I spotted Jon and Stacey surfing off the lifeguard tower Jon and I surfed at and the same break where we kissed in between sets.
Stacey and Jon had now been together longer than we were, yet I still struggled with their coupledom. She signed him up as her plus-one for the CrossFit holiday party. I didn’t go. I stopped going to all CrossFit events. I quit surfing at the beach where we had surfed together and where I first stood up on a board.
But Jon and I weren’t a great fit. I had ignored red flags because he was cute, funny and kind, and he loved the ocean too.
But my heart, my brain and my ego would not accept his new relationship. I felt like the epitome of a cliché: wanting what I couldn’t have. Although I didn’t want him, my self-esteem plummeted when I saw Stacey because I could only think: Why did she win?
I eventually realized I was only punishing myself. I translated Jon and Stacey’s successful relationship into a score: She won, I lost; he won, I lost.
When I finally returned to CrossFit’s holiday party a year later — solo — Stacey came with a new boyfriend. How did that happen? Two relationships to my none.
Two weeks later, Stacey and I attended a workout, which coincided with her birthday. I asked about her plans. “My boyfriend’s cooking me dinner. Not Jon. My new boyfriend.” Then, she smiled.
Between sets, I mustered up the courage to say, “Speaking of Jon, I owe you an apology for giving you bad vibes when you were dating him. That was my issue.”
“You never did, but I understood why it would have been hard on you.”
I thanked her and realized I’d forced myself into a competition that neither Stacey nor I needed to be in. Jon was never the prize.
And I didn’t need to apologize to her. I needed to forgive myself for the unnecessary pain I added to a difficult situation. I doubted myself so much. I gave them power over me, my workouts and my time on my board, on the waves and in my beloved ocean.
The author teaches creative writing at a local arts high school. She’s on Instagram: @littlemighty
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Lifestyle
'Love Hurts' has big fight-movie skills : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Ke Huy Quan in Love Hurts
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Ke Huy Quan in Love Hurts
Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures
In the new action movie Love Hurts, Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan stars as a real estate agent who has remade his life after leaving the employ of his terrifying gangster brother. But when a beautiful and mysterious former associate (Ariana DeBose) returns into his life, everything goes haywire. The movie has hand fighting and a touch of romance–just in time for Valentine’s Day.
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