14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not evenly distributed, March 29, 2008
This review is from: Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories about Underwear and Lingerie (The Fetish Chest) (Paperback)
Okay, I should start this off with the statement that I am straight. Personally, I don't care about a person's preference and I know that people other than my specific preference enjoy underwear and lingerie. Personally, I consider myself quite the connoisseur of such things as lingerie, because I love seeing it on a woman. My girlfriend and I have a wonderful collection. It's incredibly alluring and can be quite exotic depending on what is worn. So when I saw this particular book in my recommendation list I thought it really catered to something that would interest me and I could identify with. Unfortunately what I found was an incredibly biased book towards m/m and f/f (even less towards this) crowd. Not that this is a bad thing for them, but it doesn't have much of anything for straight people. Since this book seems to be advertised towards equal footing, I thought it wouldn't be this strikingly biased. I know this book has gotten rave reviews, but being a man of mathematics, they just don't lie. Here's a breakdown of the stories in the book and where they stand.
Panty-of-the-Month Club f/f 3 pages
Sniff Test m/m 9 pages
Choices m/f 6 pages
The Elephant Jock m/m 9 pages
White T f/f 6 pages
Cross-Dressing Confession m(cross)/f 4 pages
Your Gift to Me f/f 5 pages
A Storm of Me m(solo)/(fantasy)m 5 pages
Practice Makes Perfect f/m 7 pages
Brief Encounter m/m 9 pages
Things Between f/f 8 pages
Burlesque and Answered Prayers f/f 8 pages
Nine to Five femDom/m 11 pages
Student Body m/f 8 pages
Surprise Package f/f(cross) 6 pages
The Wash Line m/m 8 pages
Designer Fantasies f/f 6 pages
Thong Appeal m/f 7 pages
The Banana Dash m/m 13 pages
Signet and Silk m/m 5 pages
Dirty Little Boxer Boy m/m 10 pages
Never Take it Off f-cross/f 4 pages
The Politics of Gray m/m 10 pages
Whose Panties? f/m-cross 4 pages
French Cut m/f 7 pages
On the Bias f/f 9 pages
Fate and Gravity m/m 19 pages
Panty Play m/f 7 pages
The Ol'Bada Bing m/m 7 pages
A Graceful Revelation f/f 9 pages
Jock Bait: A Spike the Skaterpunk Story m/m 8 pages
I know... it looks decently balanced as you work through the list, but when you break down in terms of percents the stories are weighted towards m/m. I left out the two introductory pieces and focused solely on the stories. Here's what I found in terms of percent.
m/m = 12 or 38.71%
f/f = 10 or 32.26%
f/m = 9 or 29.03%
Total: 31 or 100%
So even looking at that chart it doesn't really seem that bad. Yeah it's weighted, but not by a huge difference. But as I was reading this I got the feeling it was weighted towards m/m a lot more. So it felt like the story total was a bit skewed in this calculation, so I decided to present a chart based on page number! Boy did I get different results (again, not including introductions):
m/m = 112 or 54.11%
f/f = 64 or 30.92%
f/m = 31 or 14.98%
Total: 207 or 100%
As you can see when you look at the amount of pages spent on m/m versus m/f there's an absolutely huge divide. Even for f/f, you don't have very much going for you here. I consider myself a man of equality and where there's only 14% of this book for me to really identify with, I can't help but think I'm strikingly in the minority here. Granted if you're a bi male you've really got a good chunk of this book to enjoy, but if you're a bi female that's only 45.89% of a book for you to enjoy.
Most of the stories are written from a first person perspective. This is probably so the reader will feel like they are doing the actions in the book. While this writing style does have its merits, by the end of the book I was sort of tired of this style and did want something different. Maybe it's my literary interest, but I do understand why it was written in this fashion.
Also I was quite surprised to see that there wasn't much of a focus on actual lingerie in this book. Most of the works were based around general underwear, even a lot of the f/f stories were biased this way. I would say the ones that really focused on the lingerie garments were "Burlesque and Answered Prayers", "French Cut", "On the Bias" and "Panty Play" to a degree. "Nine to Five" really didn't have much to do with lingerie as it had to do with stockings specifically. Granted lingerie is a rather all encompassing term these days, but I didn't see this story fit as much as others into the criteria. Although it was an interesting story and I did enjoy the ending. Even in the stories where the men were crossing and wearing panties the garment felt like a background item, not a major player in the stories. It was just as if the characters were doing it, but that's all... nothing special about it. Though I seriously have to commend this book for stepping over that bound and presenting men in that light, especially as being straight. The concept of a male wearing women's under things is usually a misnomer for a preference for other men. When most people don't grasp the fact that if you're a man and want men, you tend to like male things, not womanly things. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but a majority of these people are quite straight. So, I must say I enjoyed this particular accuracy in the stories.
The weirdest story in this book is by far "Storm of Me". It's about a guy in space by himself and all the things that happen with zero gravity. I'm sure you can get the picture. It was just a bizarre story. The other part that was kind of frustrating when I was reading was whenever there were stories of f/f where females cross dressed, like in "Surprise Package". For a while I thought they were m/f stories, but then halfway through the gender switches on one person and that was just confusing. For a while I even thought the person was a she/he. In "Never Take it Off" I'm still not sure what the gender of the second person in the story is. I think the stories should have been broken down by what was in them on their title pages so readers knew what to expect. Otherwise this manner of writing was incredibly confusing. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most people don't find gender confusion much of a preference. Granted this kind of story was in the minority so maybe they were trying to cater to such an interest, I'm sure it's out there!
So, overall would I recommend this book? No, considering it's advertised as having something for everyone, it just doesn't balance out nicely. Even if you are into m/m, you only have about half the book to read, so why would you buy it? Some of the stories were quite excellent, as I've said, but they're just so far in the background against this entire book that I can't help but feel somewhat cheated for my time and money. Eventually I started skipping stories that were m/m because I knew the book was heavily weighted that way. At a cover price of fifteen dollars, I can't figure out how that's justified. When I can purchase a regular novel for eight dollars and have more to do with lingerie in it! Frankly, I think these people should have released maybe three different books focusing solely on each sequence and then released them at a reduced price. Granted the m/f stories probably would be cut out entirely because there isn't enough page count to justify having a book published.
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