Quote #13399
Why does women's underwear have lace and flowers all over it? You never see men's underwear with a big wrench in the middle of it.
Heidi Joyce
About This Quote
This quote needs no introduction—at least for now. We're working on adding more context soon.
Interpretation
The joke points to the gendered marketing of everyday objects, using underwear design as a vivid example. Women’s lingerie is often ornamented with lace and floral motifs that signal delicacy, romance, and being “for display,” even when the garment is primarily functional. By contrast, the imagined equivalent for men—underwear emblazoned with a “big wrench”—satirizes how masculinity is coded through tools, utility, and toughness. The humor comes from the mismatch between what underwear is for and what it is made to signify, highlighting how consumer culture reinforces stereotypes about femininity as decorative and masculinity as practical.




