Published: November 30, 2007 10:41 am            

The Outdoors: Today’s long underwear sign of changing times

Originally published in the November 30, 2007, print edition.

Pulling out the long underwear is a fall rite for most hunters.

Of course, a long, long time ago, our choices were a lot simpler — a good old cotton Union suit, either in basic white or racy red, to ward off the morning chill.

But nowadays, we have more options ranging from traditional to high tech, all to keep us comfortable in the deer stand or duck blind.

I mention this after perusing one of the outdoor catalogs that recently arrived in the mail. The wide and varied selection of cold-weather undergarments spread across at least a half-dozen pages.

But what really caught my attention was the illustrations for a well-known, form-fitting line of cold weather undies. I won’t mention the brand — they get enough free advertising by plastering their logo all over the outside of their product without a free plug from me.

Suffice to say that the spendy, skin-tight garments are favored by athletes, particularly football players.

And which probably explains why the catalog illustrations of the various spandex-like clothing articles were filled with invisible human forms featuring prominent abs, bulging biceps, triceps, broad shoulders, narrow waists, sculpted quadriceps.

In other words, some really buff imaginary bods.

I own a few articles of this particular brand, thanks to a son’s extravagant Christmas gift to his dear old dad.

Otherwise, my tastes run to the less expensive, good-old fashioned and relatively inexpensive cotton long undies.

But as I was looking at the illustrations filled out with taut, muscular torsos and gams, it occurred to me that perhaps we hunters now are being marketed to as though we fancy ourselves as some kind of athletes.

Could be that the marketers are on to something here. After all, the term “athlete” seems to have become a bit nebulous and pretty broad.

I mean, I think we can agree that a gymnast is a true athlete. Likewise, a basketball player is an athlete. Anyone with the endurance to run 26 miles non-stop is an athlete, albeit a foolish one.

But then, golfers frequently are referred to as “athletes.” John Daly, no doubt, is flattered.

Ditto for NASCAR drivers.

Making left turns all afternoon with a foot on the gas evidently requires a right leg with muscles of steel.

And even race horses sometimes are referred to as athletes.

So doggone it, if we hunters can walk up and down hills for miles, hours, and then pause to shoot the eye out of a gnat from a couple hundred yards away, then maybe we should be considered athletes, too.

Not that I remotely resemble any of the forms filling out the illustrations. And even in the best of my younger days, I fell far short of such physical development.

But the ravages of time and gravity now mean that when I don my fancy, form-fitting long underwear top, there’s a bit more around the waist, a little less around the shoulders. My inseam length long ago lost the battle to the length of the waistline.

Looking in the mirror, even sucking the gut in and squaring tired shoulders, there is little hint of chiseled profiles implied in the catalog ads.

Still, the point of the tight-fitting undergarments is to keep me warm. And on that count, I’ll admit that they work very, very well.

But I can’t help but wonder: If they are supposed to be underwear, do they really need to come in camouflage?

        

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