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I'm a designer in Vancouver, Canada. I work at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, am a director of the 221A Artist Run Centre, and a member of Fieldwork design collective. I'm an Emily Carr and University of Victoria graduate and have worked in the Philippines, Indonesia and the Netherlands. I'm a cycling advocate and race on the Garneau Evolution team.

canada victoria In the News, October 25, 2006 5:14 PM 1 comments

No Sexy Underwear

The headline in today's CBC BC online:

Boxer shorts made mandatory for Richmond firefighters.

So it's well known now in the media that female firefighters get hella discriminated against and there are courts and inquiries involved to get them some rights.

So I'm reading this article and imagining just what the boxers have to do with it and, well, the article gives you little to go on.

So like what, were the guys going freeball and winging stuff around when they change in front of the girls? Is it too much close to their Victoria Secret catalogues when the guys see a lady's panties? We never seem to get the details of what these guys are doing, but if firefighters are anything like the military (or any other structured, hierarchical gathering of young men spending 90 per cent of their time sitting around twiddling (their thumbs, of course)) then I just know it makes Tailgate look like my 2nd grade birthday party.

That was a pretty good birthday actually: I think there was a baseball-themed cake by Aunt Ruth and like, my best buds and the prettiest girls from class running around our backyard. And although us boys took our shirts off to chase them we certainly didn't find out what kind of underwear they were wearing, or had any desire to. Well, maybe a subconscious desire but anyways...

Do I need these details (about the firefighters)? I suppose not. I mean really, we just know what they're doing to the women, don't we, if we know a little about men like this? And by "like this" I mean not just the bunch-of-bored-young-men syndrome, but the patriachy inherent in these old-school establishments like fire halls and construction sites and engineering and etc.

I feel I just need a sense of scale here, relatively speaking. And I feel like I need details to get angrier and more disgusted with these guys than I already feel. And why do I feel I need this? Well that's a topic for another rant...

But so what's one way the Richmond department is handling this? Leveling the underwear playing field:

[Richmond spokesman] Townsend said the city will spend $16,000 for the boxers for its 215 firefighters, with the money coming out of an existing budget.

Now, I'm getting used to seeing crazy $$$ spent on things like this. I have a female friend in the Canadian Army Reserves and have seen how much they get to spend above and beyond the men on something like bras. No problem with the actual clothing imbalance: obviously ladies need the support there. But I recall the dollar-to-bra amount was more than a little healthy for the bra manufacturers (and unhealthy for the taxpayers).

So let's see here...$16,000 / 215 = $74.41. So do they then buy like one sweet silk pair or five standard Hanes? And then at home the firefighters have a drawer for work underwear and another for afterwork, for No Fun and Fun?