Mention the phrase ‘sensual lingerie’, and no prizes for guessing what images it’ll conjure up. Slinky, silky, lacy little numbers, modelled by some airbrushed girl doing her best to look oh-so-very sultry and alluring.

But it’s an all-together different kettle of fish comes to mind when you mention sexy lingerie for men<!

Lacy Knickers…. for Men?
Underwear entrepreneurs HommeMystere aim to change all that however, with their new range of lingerie tailored specifically for men.

So. What exactly is so-called lingerie for men, anyway? Bras, Panties and G-Strings? Teddies, Stockings and Hosiery? Camisoles and Negligees?

Well. Yes, apparently. HommeMystere’s male lingerie range seems to more or less mirror existing women’s lingerie styles and options, almost exhaustively. Right down to materials, fabric choices and prints. Don’t expect to see any humorous boxer prints or monster trucks here!

All of which perhaps begs the obvious question: how is all this ‘lingerie for men’ different from regular, ordinary women’s lingerie, exactly?

Superior Quality Men’s Lingerie
It’s not, particularly. The company asserts their male lingerie is tailored for the male form, but other than that, you’d be hard pressed to spot any obvious points of difference. So why exactly would men want to wear these garments? The company appears to heavily be pushing the luxury and comfort angle as an explanation.

Indeed, HommeMystere’s website promises only the highest quality male lingerie, made with:

“care, attention to detail, and… fits your body perfectly. Comfortable men’s panties that really do fit, bra straps that don’t fall off the shoulder, teddies that don’t ‘ride up’ half way through the night, and quality soft fabrics that feel great for all day wear.”

Of course, there’s an even easier way men can avoid teddies that ride up during the night… and we have a feeling that for most guys, the ‘normal underwear’ option will continue to prove a popular choice!

Still can’t quite picture or believe it yourself? Seeing is believing! Check out the video below:

What Do You Think? Fad? Marketing gimmick? Will they actually sell any? Is it just too bizarre, or is there no such thing as ‘normal’ underwear anyway? To each their own?
Let us know your thoughts, we love to hear your opinion!

Alcohol lowers ED Risk

If you’re a moderate drinker with erectile dysfunction and a well-meaning someone in your life – wife, doctor – suggests you give up the booze and you’ll be right, tell them about the Western Australia Men’s Health Study.

This investigation of the life style and other habits of 1580 Aussie men showed drinking within normal guidelines actually decreases your risk of erection problems.

And that included a surprisingly generous amount of liquid refreshment each week.  Even binge drinkers did better in terms of bedroom performance than non-drinkers or men who drank one day a week.  (Although the study authors were quick to add binge drinking might cause other health issues apart from ED)

Lowest Risk 20 Drinks a Week

The men with the lowest risk of erectile dysfunction were those who drank up to four drinks five days a week. Moderate drinkers were 30 per cent less likely to have problems in bed compared with those who abstained.

Interestingly the men most likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction were ex-drinkers.

Researchers at Western Australia’s Keogh Institute for Medical Research said in their introduction to a report published the Journal of Sexual Medicine: “Alcohol consumption is a contentious social topic and is often assumed to have deleterious effects on sexual performance.

“There is a lack of consensus on whether alcohol consumption may in fact be beneficial to erectile function.”

Alcohol – Bedroom Positive

The study abstract states: “Compared with never-drinkers, the age-adjusted odds of ED were lower among current, weekend, and binge drinkers and higher among ex-drinkers.”

Said one of the researchers: “These findings suggest a positive association between low-risk alcohol drinking and fewer problems with erectile dysfunction.”

Seventy years of study and $US20 million spent on research on the longest running investigation into what makes humans happy can be summed up in five words: “Happiness is Love. Full Stop.”

So says George Vaillant, director of the Grant Study, which followed 268 Harvard men for 75 years, measuring an astonishing range of physical and psychological traits, from IQ to drinking habits to “the hanging length of his scrotum.” All to determine what makes men flourish – or not.

Vaillant’s now classic Adaptation to Life reported on the men’s lives up to age 55 and helped us understand key factors in maturing well. Now in a new book, Triumphs of Experience George Vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the first time what it is like to flourish far beyond conventional retirement.

Good Habits Trump Genetics

Surprisingly, the people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife, and vice versa.

While the study confirms that recovery from a lousy childhood is possible, memories of a happy childhood are a lifelong source of strength.

Marriages bring much more contentment after age 70, and physical aging after 80 is determined less by heredity than by habits formed prior to age 50. The credit for growing old with grace and vitality, it seems, goes more to ourselves than to our stellar genetic makeup.

Mother Love Important

The key finding underlying the study – reported in detail in Atlantic Monthly – is the powerful correlation between the “warmth of your relationships” and your health and happiness in old age – and the bond with your Mother matters most of all.

Specifically:

• Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers earned an average of $87,000 more a year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
• Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old.
• Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers—but not with their fathers—were associated with effectiveness at work.
• On the other hand, warm childhood relations with fathers correlated with lower rates of adult anxiety, greater enjoyment of vacations, and increased “life satisfaction” at age 75—whereas the warmth of childhood relationships with mothers had no significant bearing on life satisfaction at 75.

More generally, “warm relationships” were reflected in higher earning power.

For instance, the 58 men who scored highest on measurements of “warm relationships” earned an average of $141,000 a year more at their peak salaries (usually between ages 55 and 60) than the 31 men who scored lowest; the former were also three times more likely to have achieved professional success worthy of inclusion in Who’s Who.

Alcohol, IQ and Sex

While good relationships were a key, other factors like alcohol and intelligence also played important roles in overall life satisfaction – or lack of it:

Alcoholism was destructive

Over consumption of alcohol was:

• The main cause of divorce
• Strongly correlated with neurosis and depression
• The single biggest contributor – along with cigarette smoking – to early morbidity and death

IQ – above a certain level – made no difference 

There was no significant difference in maximum income earned by men with IQs in the 110–115 range and men with IQs higher than 150.

Politics had no bearing on life satisfaction – but aging liberals had more sex

While the most conservative men stopped having sex at an average age of 68, the most-liberal men had active sex lives into their 80s. “I have consulted urologists about this,” Vaillant writes. “They have no idea why it might be so.”

Feeling lonely? Durex’s new ‘Fundawear’ redefines the term ‘long-distance relationship’. And probably also ‘reach out and touch someone’.

Long Distance Lovers

So. What’s this so-called Fundawear all about?

Durex has cunningly appropriated technology ordinarily used to make cellphones vibrate, wiring it into underwear in such a way that it can be remotely stimulated, allowing users to transfer their ‘personal touch’ across the web, even via a smartphone app!

The company is excited to soon offer this world first to couples all over the globe, although for the present it is still in the experimental phase. Especially keen couples are however able to sign up to participate in the experimental stages via the company’s Fundawear Facebook page.

Future of Foreplay?

Dubbing it the future of foreplay, Durex predict big things for their new Fundawear line. In theory, this product will allow couples to ‘tease, tickle and tantalise’ one another anywhere, anytime. Separation and long distance relationships as we know it may never be the same again.

See below for videos outlining this innovative new fashion technology:

What Are Your Thoughts? Will this new technology usher in a new age of long term relationships, redefine foreplay? Would you or your partner try it out? Let us know what you think, we love to hear your opinions!

It used to be that loving couples choosing to live in separate houses were rich, famous and/or eccentric.  Famous couples who’ve maintained independent homes include Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton, Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd, Clive James and Prue Shaw, and Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

How It Worked for Us

Having shared exactly this kind of arrangement with the late Tim Bickerstaff, my partner of 20 years, and finding it suited us both extremely well, I’m pleased to find more people are allowing themselves the flexibility to choose what works for them rather than succumb to other people’s expectations.

We operated a business together for more than a decade and shared closely in the care and education of two of Tim’s grandchildren, but both maintained our own homes. During part of that time I was living with and caring for my aging Dad, and for the last nine years we didn’t live in the same city.

Some of that time we worked together all day every day in the business. When we didn’t see each other daily we talked on the phone up to half a dozen times and spent weekends and overseas holidays together. School holidays the grandchildren and I regularly spent a week or so with Tim at his beach house. I’m confident our relationship was stronger and more stable because of opportunity for time and space apart; I suspect it would have imploded if we’d tried to share the same house for any longer than ten days at a stretch.

Living Apart Growing Trend

So it’s no surprise to me that UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph reports ten per cent of couples in Britain now choose to live separately and the number is growing.

It’s become so common they’ve been given their own acronym – being a  LAT couple (Living Apart Together) is now seen as an acceptable lifestyle choice and it’s a trend also being seen in Australia, the US and NZ.

A survey shows LATs are predominantly under 35 (11 per cent were over 55) and it seems income is no longer a barrier to living apart lovingly. While 29 per cent of LATs were in managerial or professional jobs, 33 per cent were blue collar workers.

Reasons Couples Choose to Live Apart

Reasons couples give for living apart include:

• Personal preference (30 per cent) – one or both prefer it
• Constraint (19 per cent) – circumstances made sharing a home difficult
• Situational (12 per cent) – best they could manage in the circumstances

Many of the couple who live apart share homes in the weekend, but some shared homes from different countries.  One couple interviewed had homes in France, Australia (where they lived together for several months of the year) and the UK.

Couples who listed personal preference as the basis of their choice put high value on autonomy and independence; while they valued the intimacy of their relationship they were comfortable with their own company and had very different interests and tastes.

About a third of the younger couples hoped to ultimately move in together but were being cautious about making the move until they were sure the relationship would endure; others were prevented by religion or custom from living together before marriage.

Some had previous bad experiences with relationships – like a violent partner – which left them feeling safer living alone. And for some, circumstances like a partner’s accommodation being unsuitable, family responsibilities (a need to be close to aging parents or care for a disabled child) or conflicting job demands made living together impractical.

What Do You Think About Living Apart?

I guess those who make this choice could be considered amongst the privileged, because not everyone can manage to fund two households, and caring for a young family while apart brings its own stresses. What do you think? Are the LATs just spoilt and self-indulgent, or strong and motivated self realisers? Have you experienced living apart in a committed relationship – and did it work for you? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Thanks to Comedian Bill Kearns’ witty little ditty below, odds are good you’ll never sit as comfortably on a plastic chair again!

In this video titled Entrapment: the terrifying but tragically true tale of Trevor’s trapped testicle, the dry Aussie comic warns of the dangers of plastic chairs and trapped testicles, including some hypothetical removal methods that’ll have you squirming in sympathy pains.

See the full video for yourself below

New research suggests that penis size may matter after all; and the bigger, the better.

Is Bigger Better?

Appearing in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this ground breaking new research into the importance of penis size shows that not only is a man’s attractiveness to women directly correlated to his penis size, but even the longest penis viewed by the women in the study may not be ‘enough’.

Indeed, the data surveyed bucked predictions and showed no end point where increasing penis size was associated with a decrease in perceived attraction.

How Long?

The women surveyed demonstrated a clear preference for the largest penises displayed, in excess of 13 centimetres when flaccid. The study’s authors note that this is beyond the measurements of a whopping 95% of men.

The women were also unexpectedly swift in their judgement: sizing up the male models and proclaiming them either attractive or not in less than three seconds. And the smaller the penis, the quicker the judgements.

The researchers believe the speed of these assessments indicate that the women were not consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the model’s various attractive and unattractive features, but rather made an instinctive, snap judgement about overall attractiveness.

The Size of It

The advantage of this new study over previous studies of male physical attractiveness and penis size is that all the models were carefully varied on a range of physical features, so in theory the women could not guess what trait of physical attractiveness was being investigated and thus bias their answers.

These findings seem initially to contradict previous findings that 85% of women were more than happy with the size of their partner’s penises.

However one explanation may be the difference between a more primeval, instinctive base of attraction, and the more complex psychologically and emotionally mediated attraction women feel towards men they know personally.

What do you think? Does the data prove that the bigger a man’s penis, the more attractive he is to women? Or was the investigation too simplistic? Let us know what you think, we love to hear your opinions!

Can a couple’s intimacy offset the negative impact of job stress on male sexual health issues? A new study seems to suggest so.

Strong Relationships Protect Male Virility

New research from the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) suggests a couple’s relationship health can inoculate male sexual health against the negative impact of job-related stress. The landmark study provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for the importance and real significance of relationship health on broad sexual health, especially in men.

Of course, this has long been an established wisdom amongst sexual health therapists and counsellors. Sex is obviously more than pure mechanics, and few things have the capacity to impact on our psychological and emotional states than our relationships, especially our romantic relationships, our significant others.

It’s just that until this point the scientific data to support the wisdom has been scanty.

Link Between Job Stress and Male Sexual Health?

The evidence for the general link between job-related stress and men’s sexual difficulties has been similarly lacking.

The recent research published in the ISSM aimed to remedy both these situations. It was conducted with over 2000 men, from Portugal, Norway and Croatia. Measures were taken of the men’s job difficulties, sexual health difficulties and relationship factors.

The results indicated an association between job stress and male sexual health concerns. Interestingly though, the findings seemed to suggest that negative mood was the common factor behind both job and sexual difficulties, and that emotional support, in particular intimacy with their partner and positive fatherhood experiences, was shown to significantly reduce the risk of sexual health problems due to job stress.

Or in other words, strong, positive romantic and parental relationships are powerful protective factors against external stressors.

What’s your opinion?

Can something as simple as couple intimacy and paternal experiences really intercede against the negative effects of job stress on sexual health? Is the importance of general relationship for men’s health not given enough credence by the medical establishment? Let us know your thoughts, we love to hear your opinion!

You’d better believe it. Men really are hard wired to pleasure their partner sexually, says Sydney sex therapist Jacqueline Hellyer.

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of men in my practice, and without exception their number one concern without hesitation is pleasuring their partner.

“Couples need to understand the more pleasure the woman has, the more pleasure her man has. Women should be leading sexually and letting him know in a beautiful seductive way what pleases her.”

Delight – Or Disappointment

So why – let’s face it – would most women acknowledge their sex life disappoints as often as it delights? It all comes down to the way we think about sex in Western societies, where “virtually everything we understand about sex is dysfunctional,” says Hellyer.

The Tantra Fusion workshops Hellyer runs for women (suitably titled Luscious Women) men and couples help participants re-frame sex as a “mindful, connected and present” whole body experience. She’s referred to it the sex most Australians experience as the equivalent of baked beans when they could be having a gourmet meal.

We’ve been captured by the “adolescent male masturbating model of sex,” she says. “We think ‘I’m horny, so stimulate the genitals fairly intensely and climax’. That’s why we’ve got so many women with supposedly low libido. For many Westerners sex is possibly the least intimate thing they do.”

‘Wrong’ Thinking About Sex

Some of the myths that go along with the ‘wrong way’ of thinking about sex include:

• Sex is just for young people
• Sex is all about erections and performance – we’re always going for ‘bigger harder faster’
• Sex is something you’ve got to work yourself up to

Says Hellyer: “From the 1970s onwards with the so-called sexual revolution women were encouraged to act like teenage boys in their sex lives. Now we’ve got a generation of young women who’ve got their sexual ideas from porn – and young men complain to me they are frighteningly aggressive.”

Real Sexual Revolution Needed

The ‘sexual revolution’ we really need is one that sees sex as ‘a normal and healthy part of life’ involving “mindful love making” says Hellyer.

“We want to develop the “Mmmm” factor – slow down, get connected, remember what it is about you that’s special to me. Sex becomes something entirely different, the sensations are very different and you have more of a ‘whole body ecstasy.’

“Purely genital orgasm floods with body with certain hormones which post coitus, can leave you feeling depleted.  Mindful sex produces a constant flow of ecstatic emotions with no post coital low.”

Far from being only for the young, this kind of sex actually improves as you age, says Hellyer, who is a semi-regular commentator of the ABC’s Nightlife with Tony Delroy and makes regular TV appearances.

“In the more spiritual traditions it is believed a man can’t be a really good lover until he hits 50 and his penis becomes less of the focus.”

Five Steps To Good Mindful Sex

Changing your thinking about sex can come down to a few simple and practical steps, suggests Hellyer.  It doesn’t need to involve deep yoga or meditation… but depends on your willingness to give it time and space. Hellyer suggests you should regard it like a gourmet meal – to be savoured.

1. Create space and time for it. Your bedroom is your sanctuary – make it a beautiful place where you can enjoy private time. And don’t fall for the idea that the best sex is spontaneous and ‘just happens.” Especially in an on-going relationship you need to ensure you are not tired and distracted. And turn off the TV – one of the worst sex-killers, says Hellyer.
2. Go to your bedroom. Maybe take a cup of tea. Just sit together. Give yourselves time to feel connected, to remember what you found special in one another. It may feel really unusual – but if that’s all you do at first, that’s fine.
3. Light some candles, put some music on, create a serene calming setting.
4. Don’t jump into genitally focussed sex. Just kiss for a while and see where we go.
5. Embrace, touch each other, tell each other stories.

Most of us associate oral cancers with chain-smoking bourbon-swilling men in their seventies. New research however suggest the cancer is on the rise, amongst young non-smokers. And one of the possible causes proposed may surprise you.

Increase in Incidence of Oral Cancers

The culprit it appears may be a form of Human Papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted STD, usually manifesting as genital warts.

Research recently published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology found that the incidence rate of oral cancers amongst people in their 40s has doubled since the mid-seventies. In addition The American Cancer Society stats show that of the 34,000 who are currently afflicted by oral cancer, a whopping 39% of cases are related to HPV.

Human Papillomavirus and Cancer

In a nutshell, high risk HPV strains can cause cancers via the synthesis of special proteins, which interfere with healthy cells ability to repairs themselves and control their own reproduction rates.

The virus is transmitted only by direct contact however. HPV can only be contracted in the location it physically attaches itself to, never via pulmonary or bloodstream transmission.

Making oral sex a prime candidate for how it gets into someone’s mouth.

Can Oral Sex Really Cause Cancer?

There’s a chance HPV may also be transmitted by mouth to mouth contact, but no hard proof has yet been uncovered. It appears oral sex is the major risk factor.

Sexual health professionals worry that while young people may be getting the safe sex message, they still treat oral sex as risk-free, unnecessarily putting themselves at risk of contracting HPV. Indeed, a 2005 study in the journal Pediatrics confirms this, finding teens in particular rate oral sex as a very low health risk compared with vaginal sex.

As Dr Robert Haddad, head and neck surgeon at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, puts it:

“I think it’s obvious right now to really say that oral sex is not a safe way of having sex and it could have consequences.”

Many people, Haddad goes on to say, won’t even be aware they have contracted HPV. It may be a ticking oral cancer time-bomb for thousands of unknowing men and women. He urges people to be aware of who they are sexually active with and take necessary precautions.