The reason Speedos are stigmatised

[Torchwatch]

Originally Posted by sebbie

New clothing styles of all types often are first adopted by gays, but then frequently are gradually assimilated into the straight community as the particular fashion becomes more widely worn. Remember the old "International Male" catalogs, and the "undergear" catalogs. Gay guys frequently tend to be more body conscious than their straight counterparts, and tend to favor clothing styles that show a fit-and-trim body. For some unknown reason, most straight guys are less interested in this.


Sebbie

The Ancient Romans considered a young man whose tunic covered his knees to be effeminate. The modern 3/4 length shorts based on women's brothel creepers are rather camp, while shorts that just hide or just show the knees have a camp eunuch effect when worn by a plump clammy man.
Shorts worn well above the knees are manly, practical and sportive. Speedos are the right thing to wear in the water and are neither gay nor effete.

On the radio today was a talk by a man who had been called gay from the age of 6 because he did not like football or being beaten up and dumped in muddy puddles. At the age of 11 he discovered that gay men had sex with other gay men, he had never thought of doing this and still didn't intend trying it. As he had accepted his gay identity he felt a failure as he felt no gay lust. From an early age the str8 community seem rather confused at just what it is they are prejudiced about and are supposed to hate. So they go paddling in their effeminate brothel creeper 3/4 length shorts and complain that the swimmers in speedos look gay.

[Byron]

I enjoyed those posts and as tw* says the more it is explained the more it is likely to confuse - but Dooley has picked up the salient points.
I think we have to blame the staff at the knitting mills in Sydney in 1928 for kicking all this off - just as we have to blame Mr Hoover for a short name easy to remember for his vacuum cleaner home appliance (which even turned into a verb for the action of cleaning the carpets).

By my own rule of thumb a speedo style suit from Speedo is solely of that brand and a speedo from Adidas, a speedo from Turbo, a speedo from Arena, etc etc etc etc , account for the rest.
The difference between board shorts and speedos seems to be clear for most but it is the body-coverage between each and what is designed to be a loose/tight fit and more up or more down the thigh which causes all the confusion (not helped by journalists who don't know what they are talking about in fashion articles which crop up in trendy magazines - but I do agree with Mies Van De Rohe that less is often more).

*in the Roman reportage I still don't understand the context of "clammy" and for my generation brothel creepers were nothing to do with shorts, but the shoes of Teddy Boys.

[Bede735]

Isn't a bikini something only a woman wears, to differentiate it from the one-piece bathing suit?

Whereas for a man it's just a brief, as they don't wear a suit that covers the chest, like a woman's one piece suit.

[SwimTeamSpeedo]

Bede, I am sure that the technical definition of some types of swimsuits is bikini. Having been a competitive swimmer, we wore some pretty tight and narrow suits, but we always called them swimsuits or briefs or racers. I just don't think many guy swimmers would use the bikini word. I am still of that mind today. Even my most narrow of suits do not get the bikini title. Maybe just a hang up.....

[Byron]

Yes - the bikini word is not used by guy SWIMMERS as STS says - and briefs and racers have always been suitable terminology in my mind to know what I am talking about in the speedo context.
Bikini is only a two piece worn by women instead of a full torso suit?
Well, no - so many of the girls want to go topless these days that the breast section is discarded. In fact, as demonstrated in several posts on this forum, some guys will also want to purchase ONLY the FEMALE bikini bottoms for something brief to wear (Roxy etc. proving quite desirable).

All very confusing but there was of course a time when the one-piece woollen suit with chest coverage was the 'appropriate' attire for MEN when bathing (see vintage pics of lifeguards for one thing). After that the coming of the Speedo speedo must have been a very avant garde way to display the male physique (even if a compromise was reached with waistlines up to the rib cage).

The Brazilians interestingly take a separate line here.
Tangas were once the minimum brief (the male 'bikini' which was prevalent on the beaches of Rio) but , almost overnight , tangas became only for the girls and the guys would wear instead the ubiquitous and larger sungas (and to translate that into non-Portuguese terminology we might say square cut speedos for those).

[Dooley67]

I guess we can debate what we call our swimsuits ad infinitum, so based on the historical perspectives presented by Torchwatch, Byron, and Sebbie, and the competitive racing background presented by STS, I suggest that each one of us call our suits what we want. So, whether my suit is low cut, high cut, with side seams of 1", 1.5", 2", or 2.5", from now on, I'll be wearing briefs.

D67

[50 Free]

I only call them speedos because that's the term used for brief racing suits by the general public. I mostly wear sporti or dolphin brand but who would understand "wear your dolphin to work day"?
The Speedo Corp.should be very happy to have such incredibly superior top of mind awareness of their brand. They make my favorite goggles. But their suits cost too much and rarely have patterns that appeal to me.

[SwimTeamSpeedo]

Brands can lose their right to exclusivity (in the US, a trademark) when a term becomes so common that it is considered "generic." A company like Speedo while flattered, has to be concerned that they actually lose the exclusive use of the term Speedo (regardless of caps) if it becomes the accepted term beyond just the branding. Kleenex went through this, which is why Kleenex ads in the 60's and 70's went out of their way to say "Kleenex brand facial tissues." Xerox had a similar issue back in the 70's and 80's when the term became almost general for a photocopy. In Byron's post above he actually refers to the "Speedo speedo." Interestingly, if you look at any of the swimwear brands, at least the major ones, they do not use the term speedo to refer to any style of their swimwear, and neither do any of the major swim retailers (Swimoutlet, Metro, etc.).

[Byron]

I used the diminutive (or genericised) purely in recognition of what half the world says (mostly inaccurately) as a description of the mid-body male attire which we discuss.
The absence of speedo in promotions by other swimwear manufacturers and/or retailers
is not difficult to explain as it is hardly good ad-copywriter psychology to introduce the well known name of a big competitor into the customer's mind
at that point.
One would not after all expect to see an advertisement from Electrolux which
says "come and see our splendid new range of hoovers".

Speedo International and Speedo ABV Holdings were not happy with Dave-go-to-hell-Evans a while back about the use of AussieSpeedoGuy on his website as the content , of questionable taste , under such a title was considered damaging to their trade-marked worldwide image.
The Australian Federal Court ruled in favour of the Speedo action in 2010 and DE subsequently removed the word
from the domain name. He is however still free to call himself AussieSpeedoGuy. Whether it was worth all the trouble of launching expensive litigation to achieve this is for separate debate - but, for all I know, it may have been a decision by Pentland to make an example of him to other similar website operators after he had apparently been uncooperative.

Maybe we should ask the older generation Aussies to bring us back to the nice old neutral word cozzie to relieve the agony of so much soul-searching ?

[shaulis]

Speedo International did not want to go the way of Jello Inc. When Kraft foods bought the Jello Inc they thought got exclusive rights to the word jello too and sued many companies over it up to the US Supreme Court and Kraft lost because jello became part of our lexicon.Back in the late 70's early 80's when you heard the word speedo you knew what it was. When a manufacturer referred to their swimsuit as a speedo and people bought them that's when they trademarked the word so other manufacturers can't use the word speedo in their description of their swimwear.