What to wear?

[sebbie]

Speedo® is a brand name—a registered trademark for a company as used both in the US and internationally. It is easy to find documents explaining the history. The Speedo® (as in swim brief) was the result of efforts to develop swimwear for competitive male swimmers that would allow them to move faster through the water, perhaps about as fast as swimming naked, while still providing a cover for the male body parts. As I understand the story, Speedo® developed a brief made of materials suitable for swimming that followed the basic design idea that Jockey® had for simpler, briefer, men’s underwear. Jockey® claims to have invented the first brief-style underwear for men, though Jockey shorts (briefs) had been around for many years before Speedos® as swim briefs came out.

Some companies have a complicated relationship with their own trademarks. They dare not let their trademark fall into too common usage to describe similar products or they can lose their trademark. Instead of calling a box of soft paper handkerchiefs a box of “facial tissues”, instead it would be referred to as a box of Kleenex®. But Kleenex is just a single company’s brand name for facial tissues. If everyone else is making what people call Kleenex, the value of the brand name was lost.

And Xerox®. At one time not that long ago, making a photocopy of printed material was called Xeroxing a copy, regardless of the brand of machine being used. Xerox® even become a verb., as in “could you Xerox a copy of this for me”.

Even Kodak®. Some time ago Kodak-branded cameras and film were so popular that people referred to taking any camera as a Kodak, and picture taking was “Taking a Kodak”. That one never stuck around and the use was lost as other camera brands increased in popularity.

Meanwhile, as the popularity of swim briefs made by Speedo® increased, people started to refer to any brief style swimwear for men as a Speedo no matter who made it, and there soon became serious competitors in selling that style, as in briefs by Tyr®, Arena® Dolphin® and others that were all styled like a Speedo® but not made by Speedo® the company.

But, it is also well known that Speedo-style swimming briefs have gone in and out of fashion over the years, as has the fashion as made by companies other than Speedo®. So to survive the company had to develop a product line that included much more in the way of clothing with a sports theme than just the swimming brief—as in Speedo-branded shorts, board shorts, tee shirts and other Speedo-branded clothing for the upper body, etc. But no one would refer to a Speedo-branded pair of board shorts as a Speedo®. Generically used, a Speedo is a somewhat skimpy swimming brief regardless of who made it. Speedo® attempts to legally protect its trademark in part because if the term becomes too widely used to describe any brief-style swimwear for men, they could lose the trademark.

Every male teenager post-puberty has an interesting connection to the whole idea of wearing a swim brief, regardless of the specific brand. I suspect that this situation perhaps began way back when Speedo® introduced the first product. Granted, the brief did cover the male body parts that needed to be covered, but the whole idea of covering the male body parts with only a minimum amount of cloth, quite frankly, scared a lot of guys.

Any male knows that certain body parts, day or night, often do not remain the same size all the time, but go through very natural cycles getting larger and then smaller both day and night. And arousal can happen in unexpected places and times. The idea of wearing a garment that is brief enough to clearly show the size of a guy’s genitals in outline moment-by-moment scares a lot of guys to the point where they say “I would never wear one of those”.

Not only that, many females seem not only upset but also even angry about seeing even the outline of male body parts in such a garment. Besides, a guy wearing a swim brief could easily be teased and bullied. Further, there is the gay connection with all of this—that swim briefs are worn only by gay guys are interested in “showing off” what they have, at least in outline, to other gay guys.

While much of this is really scary for a bunch of different reasons, young males at the same time are drawn to swim briefs. I suppose that there are guys who learned to swim wearing a brief that see all of this as no big deal at all post puberty, but the more commonplace situation is the guy who has never worn a swim brief and discovers that this is a requirement if he is going to be on a high school swim team. What happens if I suddenly start to grow, even by a little.

There is also this little matter of fit and feel. The best briefs for competitive swimming fit, well, quite snug, and are made of fabric that is quite slick and smooth. By this time young guys are probably well aware of how sensitive their penises are not only to touch, but also to anything that fits snug, slick and smooth. And a guy starts to at least contemplate the idea that perhaps a snug and slick swimming brief might be an ideal garment for jerking off. If so, the guy starts to long for the possibility of owning at least a single swim brief if only for this purpose, in private.

Think now about Randall and Shawn. Randall obviously went through this part of growing up and into young adulthood much earlier than Shawn did. Bluntly put, Randall thought up a way to get a hold of a swimming brief shortly after puberty, and he used as an aid to jerking off from the time it arrived and he made first contact, so to speak. As a young adult, this has morphed into daily wear of swimming briefs as underwear under skinny jeans.

Obviously, Shawn had also been thinking about how he might look and feel in a swim brief from a very early age as well, though he never figured out how to get a hold of one to try until he met up with his dorm room mate, Randall, who was obviously wearing these a lot. Then the trip out to the Mall sporting goods store with Randall, where Shawn finally got to purchase a Speedo® as Randall picked out a new one for himself.

Once the guys got back to the dorm room, the end result was, well, predictable, and maybe similar to what would happen for any two male buddies who were in a similar situation. Given where the dorm showers are located, Shawn now had an “excuse” to own a swim brief, something he had longed for back to his early teen years. The rest of it, well you know! Even Speedo® has to know that some of its product line in briefs has uses other than for competitive swimming. After all, a sale of a product is a sale.

Finis

With this chapter, I conclude my story, at least until I dream up some more adventures. I realized I have raised a lot of questions and issues, while answering only a few of them. I hope that my readers had as much fun reading my story as I had in writing it, and I would be especially pleased if at least some of you felt compelled to try out some of the ideas I have suggested for yourself. You will not really know how you will react to a particular situation unless you try it for yourself. As I write this I am wearing just a simple old-school strap along with a slightly undersized black asics wrestling singlet. The weather has turned very warm for the first time this spring, and I am really enjoying myself in this combination. This might not be a long story writing break for me, but for now I need to take a little time off to kick back and enjoy myself. And as a final reminder, always enjoy your Speedos® no matter what the particular brand name of the ones you own!

Sebbie