The Humble Gusset
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Gusset: n. A triangle of material let in to strengthen or enlarge garments
Never has Man1 so underestimated the power and comfort, afforded by the tailor's humble gusset. When all is safely gathered in and held securely yet without restraint or restriction, life's little brickbats and anomalies are all the easier to weather and ride.
Who was it who so coarsely named this masterpiece of the tailor's art 'gusset'? Would they have deemed it such, if they had known the joy and security that such a triangle of material could afford? To those who truly know, the word implies the soft, caressing fondling of honeyed lips upon the satin sheets of the netherworld, grasped but not gripped, supported but not straight-jacketed, flexible but not fixed, contained yet not constrained.
Y-Fronts pose the very question which they fail to answer; for the front is not the problem but the underside. Boxers are but a bad two-dimensional joke whose comfort rating is below zero and can only be a development from the cardboard figures dressed with tabbed clothes cut-outs of yester-year.
Forsooth would not history itself have taken a different course had man lived longer within the comfort afforded by the noble gusset? Was Hitler driven by the irritations of chillproof boxers? Was Nixon a frustrated child of the Y-front era? Did Mao manifest his ideology whilst hitching and hoiking at the undergarments of his time? Who knows where Mankind might be now if the discovery of 'le gusset' 2 had occurred earlier?
Harmony and peace, joyfulness and tolerance, contentment and satisfaction; all characteristics of men whose dingily dangly bits are well catered for within the comfort of 'Le Gusset'. May Calvin live long. Praise le Klein. Vive le Gusset..!
'Till the tea cake of time meets the butter-knife of destiny and the coffee
bean of curiosity meets the electric grinder of fate.... adieu!
Minus-One
1In the 'male' sense!2It's French! gousse = pod. Gusset comes it would seem from a term relating to armour. A steel gusset! No, not even the French would do that.
