Tighty whiteys, Fruit of the Loom and Hanes, were the underwear of my childhood, with all kinds of not terribly great associations...not so much with the instances of direct abuse, but rather with other things I think of as side-events, circumstances in which I can now recognize I was being either scoped out or groomed by someone who (probably?) didn't take it all the way. (It's increasingly clear to me as I remember the behavior of camp counselors, certain interactions with men at the tennis club, etc., that my abuser wasn't the only guy with an eye for boys who saw me at that age and recognized a likely and appealing victim. The abuse that started at age 8, I think, put something of a target on my...back?) These are things that I recognize in retrospect, but did not fully understand at the time. At the time it was just: hmmm...why is this guy staring at me while I get ready to get in my sleeping bag? Why does that one say he wants to watch me in the shower to "check that I'm actually naked"?
In my teenage years I kept wearing tighty-whiteys because that was what was in the drawer and what everybody else wore. Plus I considered myself physically repulsive and therefore worked hard not to think too much about how I looked. In college I switched to cotton boxers, because a girlfriend insisted. She said tighty-whiteys were "too childish." I actually remember going to a local store in my college town and buying a bunch with a kind of desperation in advance of a date that she'd made clear would end up in bed. They felt oddly loose at first, but I eventually got used to that "just hanging" feeling. I still wear them now. It occurs to me that I in fact have a few pairs in the drawer that might actually date back to my college days, or shortly thereafter, which would make them at least a quarter century old. Maybe a trip to Target is in order.
For what it's worth, more silky/sexy/skimpy underwear actually makes me feel uncomfortable, bordering on triggered. I got some "new-school" briefs to wear after a vasectomy and was taken by surprise by just how uneasy it made me to have them on. As I get deeper into my various memories and place them more firmly in my childhood context, it's becoming clear to me that one of the things my abuse at 10 caused was a profound distress at being found "sexy" or "beautiful" or "physically attractive," all of which I increasingly suspect were things my abuser told me I was, and that I therefore associated with being vulnerable to what happened, and even more with that sense of abject powerlessness over my body and identity (basically being on the "object" side of a relationship of sexual objectification, I think) that I remember as one of the worst parts of the abuse. My guess is that this might also help explain why once puberty hit I became totally convinced I'd become a hideous toad. At the time I felt distress at that, but it's clear to me now that it was more about projecting an idea of myself that would make me feel "safe" from any possibility of either objectification or intimate physical connection with others.