Happy 150th birthday, dear jockstrap. How far you've come from your modest but mighty days of protecting the precious parts of bicycle messengers as they navigated the bumpy cobblestones of Boston. Invented for that purpose in 1874 by CF Bennett, who worked for a company now known as Bike Athletic, the strappy staple of yore has become a sex symbol of sorts with a reach well beyond athletics, per the AP. Fashion designers have fancied them up for catwalks. Kristen Stewart recently pulled on a Bike jockstrap for the cover of Rolling Stone, earning barbs from conservatives. Some athletes, both recreational and pro, still reach for one. And the jockstrap owes a debt to the gay men who've embraced it since the 1950s, when a hypermasculine aesthetic in gay fashion was in vogue.
Working out of Chicago, inventor Bennett set out to solve a problem in Boston for its so-called "bicycle jockeys." In that day, "loose britches" were the norm, offering little in the way of support. From there, the jockstrap found big success as the men's underwear industry grew. The slip-in cup came later, as the piece of fabric and elastic moved into the sports world, around the 1920s. "They're very coquettish. They reveal, they conceal. It's like a push-up bra," says 53-year-old Andrew Joseph. Sean McDougle, 55, a queer nudist-naturist in upstate New York, owns about 40 jockstraps. "There's a certain feeling of freedom," he says. "But the look and feel is [also] just somehow really alluring." To date, Bike Athletic has sold more than 350 million jockstraps worldwide. Tom Ford, Versace, Calvin Klein, Thom Browne, Emporio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, and Savage X Fenty have also put out jockstraps.
"It's evolved almost into kind of male lingerie at this point," says Alex Angelchik, who bought Bike Athletic with other investors in 2019. "From the '70s through today, it became kind of a cult favorite within the gay community, and expanded to the metrosexual urban community." Today, about 70% of Bike's customers are gay men, he says. The variations of jockstraps today are endless, says Timoteo Ocampo, a Los Angeles-based designer who sells them online and in boutiques around the globe. His company, Timoteo, puts out men's underwear, swimwear, and other clothing. "There's detachable fronts, zipper fronts, colors," he says. "Some companies are doing diamond chains on their jockstraps. ... People get very creative. It's more personal and showing who they are and being proud of that." Read the AP's full story here.
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