People aren’t changing their underwear every day, and social media’s judgy

We’ll be brief: Your underwear habits should be your own business. But underwear company Tommy John decided to survey 1,000 men and women to see how long they wear their unmentionables before changing them. And when the results came out on the company’s site, some readers recoiled at the dirty laundry being shared.

“Just over half of respondents say they change their underwear on a daily basis,” the company reported in a blog post. “Forty-five percent admitted to having worn the same pair of underwear for two or more days, while 13 percent claimed to have worn the same pair for a week or more.”

The Skiin underwear, for women and men, has sensors to monitor things like pulse and breathing rate.


The worst offenders are mostly men. The survey showed men are 2.5 times as likely as women to wear the same underwear for a week or more. 

Being an underwear company, of course, Tommy John wants you to buy lots and lots of its product. So in a separate survey of 1,000 Americans, the company asked questions about how long Americans keep their undies. 

This is the much more boring part of the survey, because really, do people write the purchase date on their underwear? Who remembers this stuff? 

The results show Americans are pretty thrifty: 46% of Americans have owned the same piece of underwear for a year or more, and 38% have no idea how long they’ve had their underwear. This time, men and women were equal opportunity offenders.

Although the survey is a few weeks old, it started to take off on social media late this week, inspiring some people to come clean about their habits.

“They’re nicknamed ‘briefs’ (for) a reason,” one Twitter user wrote. “Because you’re not supposed to wear or own underwear long. This also why I will go broke.” Wrote another: “I pray that no one I know wears the same underwear multiple days in a row.” 

Then again, some people just let it all hang out. Wondered one Twitter user: “Did that underwear survey include folks who don’t wear underwear?”

Kya Gin Wong

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