I just bought several light-weight polo shirts for work. They look good and they are super comfy, but I have a concern that you have already deduced from my title.
My only reasonable option, it seems, is to wear an undershirt. This will have questionable effect while bulking me up unnecessarily and likely making me sweat.
Do any of you Doper Dudes have this issue? Do you take measures to address it, or just not worry about it? Ladies - have you noticed this phenomenon on guys? Is it disturbing?
I avoid the situation by buying solid-color shirts rather than light ones. My suggestion would be to donate them to Goodwill and, while there, peruse the racks for some darker-colored replacement shirts.
I find it distasteful. Personally I find an undershirt to make me feel less sweaty. As already mentioned you can get thicker/different fabrics, but I wouldn’t be caught dead without an undershirt. Try one size smaller than you normally wear - once I did that I felt much more comfortable. It’s snugger than I would wear without a dress shirt, but works well for me.
I think it also keeps sweat off your dress shirt as well - and helps prevent pit stains.
Are you talking about showing through color-wise or showing through perky-wise?
As a woman, I prefer to not see a man’s nipples poking through his shirt, but I guess you don’t always have a lot of options. I guess some male runners stick electrical tape over their nipples to prevent chafing on long runs.
Wearing a bra sucks eggs, trust me. Skip the undershirt and don’t make yourself miserable if you don’t have to. If people don’t like your chillies they can look away. Go for comfort, anyone scandalized by hard nipples should probably stay home where it’s sterile and A-human.
This makes me think of something from last weekend. I was sitting at one of my regular beer bars in Patpong, Cleo’s, and there was a new bargirl there. Lovely lass. Wearing a tight white top, so tight that her nipples would have shown through except she had some sort of bandage across each nipple, a white rectangular patch on each one that showed through clearly. I don’t know if it was some sort of particular new fashion or if she just decided she didn’t want her nipples showing – she was new after all – but it looked like she had suffered a tragic nipple injury. I decided not to ask.
My husband wears a t-shirt under his polos every day. He doesn’t seem bothered by any excess heat. And while his t-shirts tend to get a bit . . . yellow . . . his shirts do not. A lightweight cotton undershirt can be a handy thing.
I think you really have to first determine the reason that visible male nipples are taboo, and if you’re willing to get on board with that kind of Puritanism. /soapbox
Seriously. We aren’t smooth Ken dolls, people. If you’re nether regions get all prickly when you spy two tiny bumps under a preppy polo, you might need to relax a little and find something else to get riled up about.
I know I’ve already posted in this thread, but I have something else to say. Men being completely shirtless is acceptable in some situations. So why would men worry if their nipples show through their shirt a bit?
I don’t know how sheer the shirt is and what if any other qualitative and quantitative factors might be relevant, but to the extent that this is otherwise within the bounds of good taste and the primary issue is the feeling of self consciousness it creates, it might be a good opportunity to work on your fuck-you-fu.
What I mean by that is, I think that as long as you’re making an effort to consider the sensibilities of others, at some point, if they’re going to have a problem with something like your nipples being vaguely visible, well, tough shit. As long as you have the sophistication of knowing where to draw that line (I don’t - as may be obvious by this point), I think it’s a really healthy thing to do.
I just don’t care. You can probably see my lovely manly bumps through my polo shirt. shrug
Wearing a t-shirt would be completely unacceptable, as I’d drown in my own sweat. Some days I come close with just the polo shirt. I’ve made the concession to social correctness by wearing the shirt in the first place. You want complete anatomy invisibility, you can just not look.
