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I see that Marks & Spencer Cambridge advertises in its list of store services a “bra adviser”. I'm not really sure what sort of advice you can give to a bra. “Stick it out for as long as you can,” or, “Be firm.” Perhaps some financial advice: “You can consolidate your debts into one, easy lump sum.” Advice on how to get bought might be more pertinent: “Don't look too pushy.”

On reflection, it seems likely that the adviser doesn't advise the bras, but advises the customers about them. It leads me to wondering how seriously M&S takes its commitment to be an equal opportunities employer. In slightly more of a gender-equality stretch, it leads me to consider that they should also have a men's underwear adviser as well.

TV has already shown in the contrast between Trinny and Susannah and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy that it's not acceptable for straight men to give each other clothes advice. This attitude would cause it to be even more of a challenge to their equal-opportunities policy. But even if they managed it, I really couldn't imagine such an idea taking off.

For such advice to be any use, underpants would have to be available in as many gradations of shape as bras. No more large, medium, or small, now you need your waist size, thigh diameter, and don't forget the cup size. (FTR, cricket “cups” as they are known in the colonies, or boxes here, are currently large, medium, or small.) Experienced underpants advisers would be able to gauge your cup size just by looking, but those new to the job would have to use a measuring tape.

There is a bigger resistance to overcome, though. The increasing acceptance of homosexuality in men has triggered a new kind of homophobia: not fear or hatred of gay men, but fear of being thought gay, or maybe even fear of becoming gay. It's becoming unacceptable even to see another man naked, because ‘obviously’ only a queer would want to. It's not yet ubiquitous, but certainly in my generation and those younger it is prevalent. Changing rooms and communal showers at sporting facilities are being replaced by cubicles. There is a widespread perception that we are more open about nudity and sex, but in this matter we are more secretive than even the Victorians, the archetypes of sexual repression, who thought same-sex nudity was perfectly normal. As people go to further lengths to avoid being thought gay, they raise the bar, and not going to those lengths is seen as gay in itself. In the midst of this vicious circle of avoidance, having your crotch measured sounds more like the basis of a comedy sketch than a business service. Bizarrely, this might even lead to more acceptance of women as underpants advisers than men.

One episode of the second series of The IT Crowd has a plot where the female character is visibly uncomfortable during a meeting because of an ill-fitting bra. After she complains about it to one of her male colleagues, he steals a bra from his mum's bedroom, retrofits it with a revolutionary new design, and gives it to the woman to test. They discuss bra design for a while, and the effects of bad bras on your everyday life. Eventually, it all ends with Hilarious Consequences. Being enlightened, modern grown-ups, they can talk about such matters openly and without euphemism.

Now imagine if it were the other way round. One of the male characters squirms his way through a meeting because his underpants are too tight, goes back to his office, and then complains about it to his female colleague. She still lives with her dad (as recently as 50 years ago young maidens were not expected to live alone), steals a pair of his boxers, redesigns them to not ride up, and gives them to the man to test. They discuss underpants design for a while, and how bad undies affect your everyday life.

I just can't see this second scenario being broadcast. The subject is not really any more risqué than that of the first, but it is different in some way. I hate to pose questions in my blog without coming up with plausible answers, but I'm stuck on this one.

Usually, shopping for clothes involves seeing the clothes in person, feeling their texture, and seeing the colour under proper lighting. At least one tourist guide to London exemplifies the British way of life by showing a customer and salesman in the doorway of Harrod's, where they'd gone to compare two indistinguishable shades of grey cloth under natural light. Once you've settled on a design, you then guess the right size, try them on, see if they suit you and how well cut they are, then repeat as necessary. It's a very interactive process, so buying clothes over the internet never really caught on. Buying underwear, OTOH, is more likely to be a process of rushing into a shop, wandering around the underwear department three times, standing dazed in front of the display trying to discern the difference between the products on offer, picking one up more or less at random, and buying it, without trying it on. And this isn't just a man thing: despite the existence of bra advisers, lots of women buy their underwear in exactly the same fashion. It's not a very interactive process, so one of the survivors of the dotcom bubble is figleaves.com. They sell men's and ladies' underwear over the internet. Thus, adding new underwear-related services in physical shops would be bucking the trend, but it might be just the differentiator high-street retailers and department stores need to entice people back.

But if, hypothetically, it did catch on, it could revolutionise the market. Only a small cadre of designers (and Arnold Zwicky, it seems) know the real difference between jockey shorts, boxer shorts, jersey hipsters, briefs, slips, thongs, &c., but these would readily be explained by the advisers, who would tell you which style would give the best support for the activities you do and suit your body shape best. But the manufacturers rely on customer confusion, and to restore the equilibrium there would soon be as much innovation as there has been in the lingerie side of the industry. 2010 would see the launch of Wonderpants™, specially shaped to compress and lift. There would shortly follow strapless pants, little black numbers, something for the weekend. Pouches, up to now only a novelty item, might enter the mainstream.

Once the mainstream department stores had paved the way, there could be more specialist shops. Ms. Summers, the lingerie magnate, tried launching lines of sexy men's underwear (bracket that how you like) a few years ago, but there was no market take-up. She hypothesized that this reflects a difference between men and women's rôles in sexual activity, that men don't like to try to be sexy because it makes us feel insecure, but I find it more plausible that men just aren't used to putting as much effort into our purchases. If underpant advisers existed and became accepted, Dave Summers parties mightn't be too far behind them.

Or perhaps not. One thing I always notice when I visit clothes shops on the continent is that continental underwear is much more exciting than ours. British underwear reflects our self-image, being staunch, practical, and usually grey. There is a range of cuts available, and there has been a rise in designer pants in enticing packaging. The best known example is Mr. Klein, whose advertising campaign was as iconic and fresh as the Wonderbra adverts of the late eighties in letting the product speak for itself. Following his lead, most trendy brands now have a range of underwear. But we still mostly limit ourselves to cotton or silk, and dull colours. Our European friends, OTOH, clothe themselves in all kinds of polyester or elastane blends, and bright orange is a popular colour. Why is it, I wonder, the same advances in modern fabrics and dyes that have revolutionised clothing as a whole have been excluded from British underwear? I'd be interested to hear whether the US and Australia follow the British pattern or have developed along continental lines.

Mind you, there is one group of men who are currently well-served in the underwear line, welcoming new materials and continual progress in designs: cyclists. For cyclists more than anyone else, bad pants can really ruin your day, so purchase decisions are based on technical properties — flexibility, support, padding, not moving about as you ride, and how well they keep sweat away from your skin — rather than just what's nearest eye level on the stand. Other sportsmen too have accepted new materials, but to a lesser extent, I think. Despite this market need, there is still a sort of shy embarrassment in connection with the function of shorts, just as there is in connection with the function of saddles. Magazine reviews will refer to “spud room”, “the comfort zone”, and other such awkward euphemisms, in contrast to Trinny and Susannah's straightforward comments that “you need something to lift your boobs up”. Uninhibited and outspoken as I am, even I would hesitate to go into a bike shop and complain that my shorts go up my crack.

So even those consumers who drive product development by demanding certain features aren't opening the right lines of communication or changing the way men buy underwear. Seeking the feminine perspective on the issue, I asked my mum for her opinion on the matter.

She came up with two plausible factors. First, bra purchases are much more valuable to retailers. Women often spend a lot of money on bras, so it is sensible that retailers dedicate their resources to this market segment. Second, bras are almost always bought by the wearer. It's not very often that men buy bras for women, and even when they do, that is when the most advice is required. OTOH, buying underpants is a domestic triviality, and men often delegate it to their wives, and boys to their mothers.

Both of these observations point to a single idea: that men don't attach much importance to our underwear. So, in some ways, the whole issue can be seen as self-reinforcing. Men don't consider purchases much, so manufacturers and retailers compete on price alone. Thus there is little or no product innovation, and retailers don't incur costs by offering facilities. This market homogeneity leads to lack of mind-share, which in turn means men don't attach much importance to our underwear. Lack of communication both arises from this, because underwear is a triviality not worth discussing, and contributes, because a subject can't become important without people discussing it.

One common property of self-reinforcing patterns of behaviour is that escaping the cycle requires only vision. But it seems that it would take a particularly visionary and courageous businessman to entice us out of this pattern. He would have to overcome not just the various resistances outlined above, but also indifference. He'd have to convince us that it's worth spending money on underpants, worth putting effort into it. He'd have to make us unshy about expressing our preferences for tightness, ventilation, texture, ease of access, absorbency, &c. He'd have to provide a range of shapes and sizes, with a fitting service. He'd have to dispel the taboos around the subject, make us comfortable about being comfortable. But in a society where KY Jelly is sold in supermarkets, and shaving your pubic hair is something you might do without having lost a bet, these aren't insurmountable difficulties.