Rumbling speedo discussion

[Schoolspeedo]

Last year I did quite a bit of 'wild swimming' with a friend and chanced wearing some briefer than normal bikini style speedos. Nothing that would have a wee old lady throwing her hands up in horror at their brevity or 'leaves little to the imagination' comments. He posted photos on a WhatsApp group we have along with my wife, who commented about how revealing they were, admittedly one was a very narrow white bikini. However in a discussion we later had about men’s brief swimwear, I made an observation about the modern day fashion of young women wearing these very tight, revealing 'athleisure' leggings. They are all the rage in the UK and are generally worn with the tiniest of thongs beneath which are quite visible or nothing at all showing quite a number of 'camel toes' on occasions. My argument being that it's OK for young people to wear this without anyone saying anything in any social media platform or normal media, that I've seen, but be a guy in speedos and all the negative comments come out about not wanting to see 'his junk' or package. Then there's the old chestnut about women's breasts being quite prominent in bikinis and bathing costumes but no one bothers about that. Just a thought.

[Torchwatch]

Women are trying to sell themselves, they spend a lot of time and effort getting their costumes and appearance just right, conscious of how they appear (on the beach) at any angle.
Men are the prospective customers, they are supposed to exhibit weath and power. Long shorts might be rubbish for swimming or sunning but they have pockets for wallets, cash and cards for paying for what a woman wants.
There's no pockets in a skimpy swim brief or thong, you're here to swim and sun not to hunt for women, that's socially unaccepable, are you gay?

[Schoolspeedo]

No mate, I'm not gay.

[Torchwatch]

A feminist woman recently said the dinosaurs were gay, they throw the word around indiscriminately.

[Jack Lewis]

I sense Torchwood's reply is slightly tongue in cheek, but it does raise some interesting points. While it's always been true that men are the hunters and women are the hunted, it's also true that there ARE actually some women out there who can appreciate the male physique and see it as more than just a wallet on legs. That said I am beginning to suspect these women might be in the minority. I think all of us here share the feel-good factor of something less than board-shorts and why should we be deprived of that? The price we heterosexual men pay is that some may misread the signs. We just have to decide if that bothers us or not. A long time ago I came to appreciate that generally people think 10 times more than they ever say, and that I will never know what people think of me or what I've done.

[PSDave]

Remember the word GAY has several meanings and isn't synonymous with homosexual

[Fairfax]

Like your mention Jack Lewis of the "feel good factor".
There are two reasons to like small swimsuits.
Apart from the sexual display aspect there is also the naturist element.
Women love that feeling of being almost nude while in swimwear but our (English speaking) society pretends men don't enjoy the same feeling.
If a man likes wearing small swimsuits it only ever seems to regarded as sexual.
I do wonder if maybe a decade or so from now men may "discover" the feel good factor again and they become mainstream like they were once.

[Jack Lewis]

I agree with both previous replies.

I would like to think men may one day feel free to enjoy the feel good factor but I doubt it could be anytime soon. I was pondering this over the past few days and came up with a thought - maybe we were so uninhibited in the 70s/80s simply because it was not yet socially acceptable to be homosexual. Everybody could be assumed to be straight by default. Ad I think it was generally assumed that homosexuals might be less than 10% of the population. So homophobic men did not worry about their sexuality being in doubt and they wore whatever they wanted to. But now it's assumed to be nearer 50/50 homophobic men are preoccupied with concerns about being misjudged. As I say this thought is only 48 hours old so I'm only floating it for discussion.

[Fairfax]

I think the main problem for men is that nudity has become so much more sexualised over the past few decades.
Probably started around the end of the 1970's when both color TV and magazines became common place.
This meant women with there sexual bits hidden (mostly) were free to enjoy wearing skin tight garmets but men with there genitals protruding are still regarded as sort of nude and therefore sexualised.
Not the same as completely naked but certainly in a grey area that is discouraged.
An excemption exists for serious sporting activities (mainly swimming and cycling but also things like body building) and men who enjoy wearing skin tight garmets certainly take advantage of it.

[Jack Lewis]

This is interesting. There are photos on the net from the 70s/80s of Jon Bonjovi wearing tight and dangerously short cutoff frayed denim shorts. He might have been self-objectifying, or not - but he wouldn't have been plagued by thoughts of "will anyone think I'm gay?" because it was always implicitly assumed that virtually nobody was (and that even if they were, they wouldn't admit it would they?). So the same goes for small swimwear. Because all sexual orientations are socially acceptable there are more things for men to consider. They may draw the wrong conclusions; we all do. But this is why we'll never see a return to small swimwear for men on public beaches.

[BikenSwim]

AQUX (Japan) and Mategear (Korea) used to make skimpy flat-front bikinis for men that wanted to minimize the bulge. I enjoyed the squeeze and smooth look. Now the new styles have moderate pouches.
Lexybblair (USA) still makes gaff thongs for a really flat-front look.
I can wear any of these brands at a public beach.

[Jack Lewis]

On a recent UK TV show ("GoggleBox") a clip of Jason Donovan in speedos and Kylie Minogue in a bikini on the beach in Australia was met by a comment "Oh my - you can see his bulge!!" And this from an older contributor who would have been around in the 70s. It's incredible how no-one ever says "Oh my - you can see she's got breasts". How did this statement of the obvious migrate from "not worthy of mention" to "enough to make people fall off the chairs"!?