Privates on parade

We have seen a lot of men this summer. Oh, don’t worry, chaps: this isn’t a rant about the male domination of public life (this time). I mean the way the hitherto-hidden trouser snake has made a bid for freedom. The way the phallus keeps popping up. The arrival of the penis parade.

First there was Anthony Weiner, the married US politician with the headline writer’s fantasy of a name, who quit politics two years ago in disgrace after it emerged he was a serial sexter. Weiner had accidentally sent a crotch shot — intended for a woman who wasn’t his wife — to all his Twitter followers.

He made a comeback in May, announcing that he wanted to be mayor of New York. But last month it was revealed that Weiner had actually used his break from politics to spend more quality time with his camera phone. And if the Democrat wasn’t already feeling a little exposed, the website Buzzfeed kindly decided to post the alleged images uncensored.

Weiner wasn’t alone, though. This week, the married Australian MP Peter Dowling seems to have been caught with his trousers down too — only he was serving up his sausage in red wine sauce. In an image you’ll immediately want scrubbed from your mind, Dowling allegedly photographed his genitals in a glass of plonk. Oh, the eroticism! Disappointed pun-lovers who realised there was little phallic-fun to be had with “Dowling” were temporarily assuaged by the discovery that the (very?) Liberal MP chaired the Queensland parliament’s ethics committee.

But beyond this pair of priapically minded politicians, it seems ordinary men can suffer such indignities too — and for rather more innocent reasons. On Wednesday, a picture started doing the rounds on Twitter of a handsome gent in a pair of trousers so tight that there was no need to ask whether he dressed to the left or the right. A kind interpretation was that he looked as if he had just pirouetted off the stage of the London Coliseum. But Mr Circulation-Stopping Pants was soon coming in for flak, with one Twitter user joking: “Wow, the Middle Ages is calling and wants its codpiece back.” Others embraced him as a new internet celebrity. Eventually, it was suggested that the poor bloke had been forced to borrow his girlfriend’s trousers after a mishap on a train.

Unfortunately, in the internet and iPhone age, it seems it’s hard to stop your exposure being exposed. Perhaps someone might have advised him to do up his jacket, though.