During one of my weekly expeditions to brave Walmart, a phenomenon that I had never noticed was uncovered to me. Underwear shame.

I was in the men’s underwear aisle because I needed to restock my collection. Since my summer is being spent running to and fro in the heat, I needed underwear that would breathe because #TheChafeIsReal.

As I was trying to find the shape and fit that I liked, I noticed other men casually walk into the aisle on their phones and then pretend to be shocked that they were suddenly surrounded by boxer-briefs. They would stand there for a bit and then after looking both ways, like they were worried about the NSA watching them peruse Fruit of the Loom, would quickly grab the first package they saw and scurry away.

I stuck around a little while after I found the underwear I needed just to gather more observations, and sure enough in the span of roughly 10 minutes I observed 20 men go through the same ritual. It was as if they had all been trained to behave in this manner. Almost as if their masculinity would be questioned for looking at underwear, or perhaps the image of a shirtless man wearing underwear. You know, the homophobic part of socialized toxic masculinity.

After I had done my shopping in the home goods section (side note, furnishing a whole apartment is expensive) I had to return to the food section because I forgot to pick up juice. Without thinking I took the closest available route which as it so happened cut through the women’s underwear rack. I decided to make observations of women to see if this underwear shame was only affecting men.

I parked my cart outside of the rack and pretended to talk to someone on my cellphone. As I utilized my acting skills, I witnessed women performing themselves! They too would find some reason to “accidentally” walk into the underwear section, pretend to be surprised at the sea of frills and colors around them and grab their selection and bolt out. Now women did take longer to look for their purchases, probably because there’s more to bras and panties than there is to boxers. However despite this they all seemed to exhibit the same type of shame at buying underwear.

When I went to check out, one of the men I observed was ahead of me and I watched as he carefully placed the package of underwear he selected underneath a shirt, ostensibly to hide from the rest of the world that he dare buy underwear.

It’s fabric for Pete’s sakes, people! Why are we so afraid of it? Everyone wears underwear, well most people do. Some people don’t, and that’s their prerogative but that’s not the point.

The issue here isn’t the underwear, it’s the meaning we give it. Underwear is seen as something sexual and dirty. There are fetishes for underwear and subsequent fetishes for all of the different types of underwear. We’ve turned inanimate pieces of clothing into a culture of shame and disgust.

Don’t even get me started on the sheer measures men take to avoid getting near women’s underwear. I’ve seen men purposefully go out of their way to not walk anywhere near a Victoria’s Secret store in the mall. I’ve witnessed a man refuse to pick up a magazine in order to get the other one underneath it because there was an image of a thong on the cover. Not a woman wearing a thong, the thong was hanging on the door of a washing machine because the image was an advertisement for detergent. I can’t make this crap up people.

Underwear isn’t inherently sexual. It’s only goal is to protect the things we have down there. They are very important pieces of equipment, and they deserve to have the best clothing covering them. Why are we so afraid of our bodies that we treat buying clothing to cover parts of it, the same way we treat eating fast food?

Our Puritanical treatment of sex goes further than underwear. It's why boys are petrified of buying condoms in the store. It's treatment of female sexuality is why we have the feminist movement. It's the reason why even though it's been 20 years and she had nothing to do with it, one of the most popular arguments against Hillary involve Monica. Oh and a little thing called victim blaming.

I will only say it once because I really didn't think I'd ever have to say it; underwear isn't scary. As adults we all know what underwear looks like, and what the parts they cover look like as well. Let's stop pretending that we've committed a crime by buying a necessity and get on with our lives.