Gareth Dorrian
It’s 1991 and I beg my mother to get me a pair of boxer shorts: Matt Goss of Bros wears them.
I’m in my early teens and they are my first pair, my underclothes until now have been purely functional, working class, lacking even a junior portion of popstar gravitas. Before Bros I wore pants which guaranteed I would avoid serious accidents at all costs, lest hospital staff got a glimpse.
Everything was Bros in 1991. Their brilliant white teeth, laser-fitted jeans, dead-eyed gay porn fluffer stares and master race haircuts characterise a new decade unafraid of looking more clean-cut than the scruffy 80s. I didn’t have their records, but I am amazed at their effect on females, girls who look like they could be off my estate.
Bros’s faces were everywhere. Press shots show Matt Goss open-mouthed, clutching a mic at the tail end of a gig. Look further down and his jeans are dropped to his ankles, exposing boxers to a hysterical crowd’s wailing pleasure: A baffling, yet somehow innocent, pop finale.
He wears Stars and Stripes boxers. I suspect he has several pairs. Maybe they are cut from a giant length of material kept on the van.
Mine are like Matt’s, they are also shorts, but instead of a cool US flag they have nondescript cartoon characters, probably scrawled onto the cotton by a Taiwanese sweat shop’s employee of the month.
It strikes me now that a pop singer would have his name tattooed on the sex offender register if he pulled something similar in 2012. But who can argue with progress?
