Briefs are pretty straightforward. While bikinis and tangas are similar to true briefs, each of those has a fairly distinctive feature that separates if from being a brief (e.g. bikinis are nothing but waistband at the hips). Thongs, g-strings, and jockstraps are all similar to briefs in front but very different in back. The only real grey area in brief-adjacent things is the existence of jock-briefs; there’s a sliding scale of brief/brief-with-a-hole/jock-brief/jockstrap, but it’s also a fairly straightforward continuum there, so not a ton of confusion.

Boxers though? Holy hell, that’s a mess!

There’s little to no standard as to what brands call their underwear with legs. Before I started ordering lots of underwear, this is what I thought we had:
—Boxers: long-ish legs, completely flat front, has a fly that’s usually buttoned but sometimes just open, and fairly loose (though not always)
—Boxer briefs: long-ish legs, some attempt (even if minimal) of acknowledging anatomy e.g. nice pouch and/or fly (like traditional briefs), and usually somewhat skintight
—Trunks: shorter than the others occasionally to the point of approaching briefs, usually have a good pouch, usually do *not* have a fly, also fairly skintight

Is that how men’s underwear these days actually works? Not in the slightest! I’ve seen long, Y-Fly pairs advertised as “trunks”, I’ve seen tight, square-cut pairs advertised as “boxers”, and a ton of craziness in between. That’s not even mentioning the “midcuts” that come up – basically my idea of “trunks”, but longer.

Does anyone else want to try making sense of all of this? Because I’ve mostly given up at this point. X’-D I still have to categorize things on the blog here, so that’s why this got on my mind.