Conference quark::mennotes-v1

    I pick up stockings for my wife all the time. Also other 'female
    products'. I have to admit that the first (few) times it felt
    uncomfortable. I'm at a total loss to explain why. I usually
    wind up going for them because my wife needs/whats them badly
    before she goes out. (Catch-22?) So I don't complain. Other
    married men seem to find themselves in the same situation from
    time to time with varying levels of discomfort.
    
    I think that for a lot of men, buying women's undergarments/stockings
    is uneasy because they're afraid that people might think they're
    buying then for themselves. Not everyone can handle that. What I
    really don't understand is my shyness about buying things that I'm
    physically unable to use (tampons/pads/etc). It is silly.
    
    		Alfred

    BTW, I used to know a store that had women whose job it was to help
    men shop for the women in their lives. The idea was they'd help
    with colours,sizes,etc. I tend to think that an unspoken part of
    the attraction was for men who didn't want to be seen in the womens
    sections without a women.

    Re: .0
    
    	Maybe they were just wondering how come you had to try them
    	on first.
    
    	Jake

In line with what Alfred had to say in .1, I too used to be somewhat con-
cerned about making purchases of feminine items for my wife. That was
years ago - now my two teenage daughters have me doing it as well. I
figure if they're not embarrassed to ask, why should I be embarrassed
to pick the items up for them. Besides, I've found that while it doesn't
bother me all that much, it chagrins the hell out of most young female
sales clerks! [ :^) ]

-Jack

    Picture the scene...I'm out helping mum do her shopping. She puts
    her bags down to re-arrange their contents. She hands me her handbag.
    I hold it, but feel distinctly uncomfortable. Of course, I'm only
    holding it whilst she's occupied...but I still feel akward.
    
    The worst moment was when she disappeared for a few seconds...er...how
    am I supposed to hold this handbag...er...!
    
    Pete :-)

    Re.0
    
    I think many of the "tough" and "macho" types are so hell-bent on
    keeping thier image up, they are too afraid to do things like buy
    pantyhose.  They are desperately afraid that someone is going to
    think they're gay or something.  It was the three of you, and the
    others were all walking around thinking "Jeez, if I offer to get
    them, the other guys are going to think I do this all the time,
    so I'm going to act like I'm shocked at the thought, so they don't
    get the wrong idea about it."  
    
    If you aren't doing anything wrong (and I'm not saying that buying
    pantyhose *is*, it's just "different") you have nothing to be ashamed
    of.  This is a good example:
    
    For my (now ex-) boyfriend's birthday, I jokingly decided to get
    him some dirty magazines, since he was constantly hanging pictures
    of naked women on their dorm walls.  I went to a convenience store
    and asked for the goriest ones they had.  Being a female, sure,
    I was a little embarrassed.  I was just about to explain the situation
    to the cashier, when I thought "Hey, why do I feel as if I owe her
    an explanation?  They aren't for me, but what business is it of
    hers if they were?"
    
    Any comments?
    
    stacie

    Just re-reading my reply, and I'm not sure yet how/if you can edit.
    
    it was my boyfriend's roomate's birthday, not my boyfriend's.
    Not that it matters, I'm just trying to tell it like it was.
    
    stacie

    
    Re. .5
    
    	   Would you have been more embarrassed if the clerk was
    a male? Would you have still made the purchase?
    
    Just wondering...
    
    Dan
    

    
    Similar experience:
    	I had a friend who told me he could not go into a store and
    buy prophylactics if the cashier was female.  He said it embarassed
    him because the woman would know what he had in mind.  I couldn't
    figure it out!  This same guy would have turned purple at the thought
    of buying tampons, smut magazines, or any other personal products.
    Yet this same kid would put on one of the best macho tough guy acts
    I've ever seen.  
    	I always figured it this way.  The items are a necessary part
    of life, if that embaresses you, or you think I'm a wierdo, well
    tough sh*t on you!!
    
    

    Re: .5
    
    The thought that my friends might think I do this all of the time
    I don't think entered my mind. I just wasn't going to be the one
    to do it...then I thought, hell, we're wasting time.
    
    Oddly enough the guy who acted shocked liked to play the big hero.
    When I first met him he threw loud firecrackers round my room. He
    was always disappearing off to set off stage maroons in the woods.
    
    One particular day he wired the doorknob of his room to the mains.
    Outside were a group of people with buckets of water - I blew my top,
    and told him what an idiot he was. He looked like he was about to thump
    me, but calmed down. 
    
    Crazy guy.
    
    Pete.

    re.7
    
    yes, I think I'd still have made the purchase.  I don't think the
    sex of the cashier made much of a difference.
    
    I'll confess to a little 'joke' a friend and I played on a kid from
    our class in high school last week:
    
    We were walking around a local drug store buying nail polish,
    hairspray, etc. ("respectable" products, you know) and we saw a
    kid from our high school class.  We noticed he was doing an awful
    lot of waliking around sheepishly.  We decided that we were sure
    he was coming in to buy condoms and was waiting for us to leave.
     We wouldn't.  Finally, while we were at the back of the store,
    he dashed to the counter with something in his hand.  Of course,
    we picked that moment to pay for our purchases, walked right over
    and started talking to him.  He was gestruing frantically for the
    cashier, also a young girl, to "bag" the condoms, but we made sure
    he knew we saw.  Outside the store, however, we told him that we
    did it on purpose, and apologized.  We all had a good laugh about
    how he spent 15 minutes walking down the 5-aisle drugstore and how
    we wouldn't leave.
    
    stacie

    re: .4
    
    I think purses are great fun.  Back in Los Angeles, a friend asked me
    to hold her purse for a minute.  I said sure, and after a short while,
    put it over my shoulder (i.e. wore it).  After ten or fifteen minutes
    of walking, my friend recognized what I had done.  She was really
    embarrassed; I thought it was funny.
    
    I still try to do that from time to time, but rarely get away with it.
    
    I look at it this way: If somebody damns me for some action without
    really knowing who I am, then they're not somebody I'd like to know
    anyway.
    
    	-- Jeff

    Well I think that part of the problem is really adolesence and
    adolesant embarassment about anything remotively related to *s*x*!
    which is brand new to them (and they often think that they have
    just invented it! :-) _ silly of us/them isn't it?).
    
    I remember that my uncle was too embarassed to buy cramp medicine
    for my mother some 60 years ago - he would always take the perscription
    to a drug store across town where he wasn't known.  And I remember
    a story a friend of mine told me when I was 13. She had gone to
    visit her widowed grandfather who was then in his 60s. She had just
    gotten her period (and at 13 let me tell you girls are *EMBARASSED*
    if anyone knows they have their period!) She was away from home
    and was incapable of telling her grandfather what she needed, so
    she went to the grocery store with him and picked out a box of kotex,
    intending to buy it herself. (and believe me this took *great*
    courage!) She was heading to the cashier when her grandfather came
    up to her, took the box and asked in the sort of loud voice that
    only an older gentleman can manage (;-) ....reaching most of the
    store I am sure...) "WHAT IS THIS?"  "um, they are, ah, sanitary napkins
    grandfather," "SANITARY NAPKINS! ARE YOU SAYING THAT THE NAPKINS
    IN OUR HOUSE AREN'T SANITARY?"  my friend stood there speachless,
    and scarlet, until, suddenly her grandfather, turned equally red,
    and bellowed "BUY IT!"  shoved the box in her hands and stalked
    out of the store.

    Once we get used to the idea that women wear tights, and men use
    athletic supporters, and that women use sanitary napkins and tampax,
    and that young men (and young women now adays) have a need to buy
    condoms, the embarassment wears off.....this is all no longer new,
    and exciting and embarassing and different, and it all becomes as
    ordinary as buying paper towels, or asprin. 
    
    Have we gained or lost? I dunno, at least we have matured and can
    laugh at our selves.
    
    Bonnie
    

    .11 Jeff, I couldn't have said it any better!!:^)
    
    Gino

    Once I remember when I was about 11, my mother sent me to the drug
    store to buy her some foam.  The druggist gave me a *very* strange
    look - like "Is she *really* using that already???".  It didn't
    bother me, *I* knew who/what it was for.
    
    About the same time, buying Kotex from a male clerk would embarass
    me, because, he would *know* that I had my period.
    
    Oddly, a number of years after that, I was embarassed buying condoms.
    
    Elizabeth
    

    I went into a drug store once to buy some condoms, but couldn't
    locate the display.  An older woman working in the store as a
    sales-clerk (grandmotherly-type) came up to me and asked if she could 
    help me find what I was looking for.  I stuttered out "N-n-no thanks"
    , turned and walked out without buying anything.
    
    What was I gonna say to this sweet old lady ?
    "Where's the rubbers ?"  I was embarrased as hell !

    
    
    	Look her straight in the eye and say "I'm looking for the condoms
    	and I'm having difficulty finding them"  If she looks strangely
    	at you then say "I have some water balloons to throw at people"
    
    							mike

    Re: .16
    
    If she has a vicious streak in her, she'll ask "what size?" :-)
    
    			Steve

    
    
    	This reminds me of the movie "Summer of '42".. :-)
    
    							mike

    A (female) friend of mine used to work in a chemist shop (I think that's
    a drugstore in the U.S.). where they only employed female clerks.
    
    She once told me the story of a guy who walked in when the shop
    was empty, looked all around as though he was looking for a male
    salesman and then walked straight up to my friend and her colleague
    and asked for "A Packet of condoms without giggles please..."

    re .17, .18:
    
    Reminds me of the joke about the serial numbers.
    
    - M

        That reminds me of another old joke....
        
        Guy #1: did you ever see the warning message on a condom?
        
        Guy #2: Nope! Where is it?
        
        Guy #1: On the rim of the open end, maybe you don't unroll it
                far enough.  ;*)
        
        Andy.
        

    re .22
    
    No no... that's the serial number joke.
    
    :-)
    
    - M

>        magazine and went to pay for them, when a gentleman behind me (whose 
>    teeth I had just cleaned 3 months of so before then).. said... "Hey
>    Gale, did you get the correct size".... at which I dropped my jaw,

    Anyone mean enough to do that to someone deserves to get the answer,
    "Why? Do they come larger then extra large?"
    
    			Alfred    

        RE .23
        
        You're right Mike - same joke, just a variation! :^)
        
        And another oldie:-
        
        Ever wonder why there's a nipple at the end?
        

        
        Gives something  to  put  your  foot  on when taking it off, of
        course!
        
        Andy ;*)        

    re: -1