Part XXXIV
 

Part XXXIV

The Speedo® brand would probably like to find a way in which the label would simply be a brand for athletic and performance gear, without getting bogged down in questions related to male sexuality issues (might the guy seen wearing a branded brief be gay or not?), guys wearing swim briefs in gay pride parades, the crazy anger that some women seem to display over the whole issue of should a guy be seen in public wearing a Speedo etc. etc. There are a lot of interesting and complicated questions here, questions that I have thought about for most of my life but never been able to find a satisfactory answer. Speedo makes money selling swimwear, and it doesn’t make any difference if the customer making the purchase is gay or straight.

The Wikipedia article on Speedo says that Speedo claims that only 2 % of their annual sales revenue comes from selling the iconic and much-maligned briefs, and that they would prefer to be known as a company that generally sells athletic clothing and other accessories as opposed to the brief.

The problem with this, of course, is that if someone says “There is a guy in a Speedo” they are not likely to be referring to a guy they see wearing a loose-fitting board short with the Speedo boomerang logo embroidered on one leg! Once a brand name goes generic there is very little a company can do to turn that around.

Besides, some of this is simply product placement. In the year that Christopher Atkins played the young camp counselor love interest of Linda Gray (the wife of J.R. Ewing) on “Dallas” he showed up on several episodes wearing only the classic bright royal blue Speedo with the boomerang logo obvious.

His character’s name on the show was “Peter Richards” and he very obviously had one of those tucked snuggly under the tight Speedo in the “up” position. Linda Gray swooned. So did the viewers. The director and producers had to know what they were doing. This was a great moment in network TV.

So here are some questions to think about:

1. What if I am a guy who gets aroused and maybe erect just thinking about getting my groin into a swim brief (Speedo or another brand). Is this completely normal for all guys or are some guys somehow immune? A related issue is whether or not a treatment exists so that I can just put on a swim brief without having an involuntary “reation” like this. If I wear a swim brief, say once a week, with this soon become so normal that the reaction will no longer occur? What does my involuntary reaction say about my sexual orientation?

2. Do other guys have this “problem” is this something that is uncommon? Is this a fetish of some sort that a psychiatrist could possibly treat?

3. Suppose I consider myself to be straight but I get aroused when I see another handsome guy wearing a swim brief? Does this mean that I am not as straight as I thought I was?

4. Why do some females seem to get very angry and upset whenever the subject of guys wearing a Speedo comes up let alone actually observing a guy wearing a Speedo. The “Dallas” viewers didn’t seem to react that way, but this was in the 1980s. More generally, guys to not have temper tantrums when they see scantily clothed women displaying obvious female body parts even if covered? What is it about women who seem to get upset if a guy appears to have a penis though covered with the cloth of a swim brief?

5. The slick, smooth and snug swim briefs get me erect and are great fun to get off in. Is this a psychiatric “illness” of some sort if I admit to enjoying wearing a Speedo for jerking off, or should this just be considered a normal thing for guys to do? What if my college dorm mate enters the room while I am enjoying myself this way? How do I get myself out of that predicament, anyway?

6. What if I discover that jerking off while wearing a Speedo is such a great pastime that it deters me from forming bonds with other people who could potentially be a real sexual partner? Bonding with another person so close that the other person becomes a sexual partners is complicated stuff, with all sorts of complexities beyond the sex act itself. If I am really into the finding a partner stuff in order to pleasure myself sexually, is all this stuff at the end of the day worth the effort.

7. More generally if sex with a partner is such great stuff why do sexual relationships with partners so regularly come apart? This is not directly a Speedo-related issue but indirectly it is. They situation is not significantly different in the gay or straight worlds of partner bonding (though the gay partner might be more tolerant of the jerking off in a swim brief than the female partner would!). Some sexual relationships come apart because one or both partners have found another person to engage in sex. But in other breakups, the guy goes back to just being single, and the masturbation techniques (including those that make use of a swim brief) may end up being front and center again.

Is having an option like this in such a situation a problem or a solution? There are guys who marry, get divorced and immediately go into a sexual relationship again with another person and then never But then there are other guys who never form sexual bonds or marry again. Is it not a good thing that the solo-sex options that the solo-sex options that were enjoyable before the first relationship such as the jerking off in the swim brief still exist and be readily available once again?

Tough questions to answer, all of these. Let me jerk off in my Speedo while I try and find answers to them!

To be continued…
 

Part XXXV
 

Part XXXV

For a long time in the 1980s, it appeared that the swimming briefs being worn by the internationally competitive swimmers at the major meets were getting ever snugger and skimpier. A European swimmer would show up in a really skimpy brief with very sides and at the following meet you would see the American competitor wearing a skimpier brief as well. This made for some interesting TV as the cameras panned the bodies of the competitors. All of this was more-or-less built on the basic idea that there was nopthing like skin for moving rapidly in the water and that called for briefs with ever less material.

Then, seemingly almost overnight, everything changed. I guess swimmers owe Speedo for playing with the idea that a swimwear fabric could move through the water faster than bare skin. This was followed by other manufacturers of competition swimwear coming up with their own versions of what Speedo was attempting. No longer were tiny, body-hugging suits in, but rather the new jammers styles that were at least as tight but covered more down to bith thigh.

Suddenly you would turn on the TV to watch a major meet and all the guys would be wearing jammer style suits that had cloth to mid thigh. The high school swimmers who were always wary of appearing in public with a brief and a hard-on quickly shifted to jammers as well.

If you are interested in the details of Speedos efforts to develop suits that were faser than bare skin the Wikipedia Speedo site lays that all out in detail along with the issues they had in FINA disapproving some of the designs, and the world records set by swimmers who were wearing the full-body suits that were ultimately not allowed in international and other important competitions. Never mind that these full-body suits individually may have cost upwards of $1000 and last for only a few swims, and were nearly impossible to get into and out of. Pitty the swimmer who decides he needs to use the restroom after spending 30 minutes tugging and pulling himself into the suit! These were not very practical even if they had remained legal

What evolved out of this were improvements in Jammer-style suits made of the same fabrics. What got disallowed is a sut for a male that covered the chest, and suits that extended below the knee. The speedy fabrics are still allowed but the suit has to look like a conventional jammer.

For the guy who tended to get a hard on at the mere thought of wearing a swim brief, I’m not sure if the problem is going to disappear if he wears a jammer. Granted, jammers cover more skin but areas such as the thighs are encased in fabric the same as the groin area. Hiding the fact that a guy has male body parts and the “condition” those parts are in might be every bit as difficult as with a brief. Still, jammers do not seem to have some of the issues briefs have. A guy wearing a jammer is less likely to be accused of being gay, for example.

Think about three different garments a guy could wear that are all made of material that fits with stretch
1. Cotton or polyester underwear with legs extending to mid thigh and fabric blended with perhaps 5% Elastane
2. Compression gear made of polyester with perhaps 10-15 % Elastane
3. Swimming jammer typically made of polyester and 20% Elastane
The underwear is designed to be worn as an undergarment and usually has a sewn separate pouch made to fit the penis. The compression gear is interesting. Most versions have a sewn built in pouch, but a few versions do not. Generally the compression gear fabric is designed to compress more and squeeze everything snugger than the underwear fabric does. After all, compression gear is designed to compress!

Part of the issue with shorts made as compression gear is the debate as to whether or not guys can wear these, say, to the gym, without another layer. The issue seems to be mainly focused on whether a specific design has a sewn pouch or not,and if so, how prominent is is. Some guys seem to be more nervous about being seen in public wearing compression shorts that have an obvious pouch than other guy are. It is interesting to read the comments on compression shorts with pouches when someone asks the specific question as to whether these can be worn without another garment on top.

Generally, swimming jammers are made without a sewn pouch and are constructed to press the male anatomy down as flat as possible, all in the name of having a sleeker surface in order to swim faster. But guys still have the problem of finding a comfortable position for the male body parts and just as in a brief, a “penis up” position is certainly a possibility. In which case, for the guy wearing a jammer it may be just as obvios that he has male body parts as it would have been wearing a swim brief.

Finally, I come to the topic of whether or not a jammer is as likely to create an arousal issue for a swimmer as a brief. Is the idea of jerking of in a swimsuit apply only to briefs, or equally to jammers. Jammers do not have quite the reputation briefs have in this regard.

Having said that, more and more members of high school and college swim teams seem to be going away from Jammers and back to briefs especially in competitions. I think it kinda depends of what the guys generally regarded as the top competitors do. If the fastest swimmer on my team set a very good time then I might be more inclined to switch to a brief too. If I go to a meet where teams from other schools are competing and one of the swimmers from another school sets a record while wearing a brief, briefs might start proliferating even with guys who previously lacked the nerve to wear one. Interesting stuff, all of this is!

Me, I wear swimming jammers or compression shorts along with a compression top not to swim, but to use my stationary rowing and bicycling machines. I have no problem with others in the neighborhood seeing me irrespective of whether the shorts have a pouch or not.

To be continued…

Part XXXVI
 

Part XXXVI

The iconic swim brief was invented in 1928 by a Scott named Alexander McRae who started the company that became Speedo® and gave its name to the iconic swimwear. The Jockey brief was invented in 1935 and sold by Coopers Inc., a company that was founded by Samuel T. Cooper in St. Joseph, Michigan in 1876 originally for making socks. The history of the male athletic supporter goes back even farther than that. The original athletic supporter was invented by C.F. Bennett of a Chicago sporting goods company called Sharp and Smith introduced in 1874, and was intended for wear by guys who rode bicycles as messenger and delivery boys over rough streets. It was not until 1897 that this was so successful that Bennett formed what was to be called the Bike company with the major product being the male athletic supporter.

Having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, athletic supporters were all but mandatory for any sort of gym-related physical activity. Guys routinely wore straps under loose-fitting shorts given that stretch fabrics were in their infancy. A strap was something that told the other guys that you were engaging in sufficiently rigorous athletics to “need a strap”. After all, a strap was what the bigger and more highly-skilled athletes wore.

Interestingly, for a lot of guys, getting your first strap was something of a “coming of age” thing that occurred at or shortly after puberty. Females had their first period or menarche typically around age 12. For guys, the big life event was the first conscious ejaculation of semen, analogously but rarely referred to as the thorache. Females have no direct control over exactly when menarche occurs but males do at least to a degree. For most males, this is likely a very private event. To a certain degree guys are proud of having reached that life milestone but it is not something they would talk about.

Wearing a strap for the first time becomes something of a substitute for conveying some of the same information about becoming an adult without words. The strap says I am a good enough of an athlete to be engaging in activities where I need the protection, but also, I am mature enough sexually to need to be concerned about this part of my body.

So, guys grow up with some similar misgivings about wearing a strap to wearing a Speedo®. Any guy realizes that the strap will fit snuggly around the penis and balls and the mere thought of that tends to cause certain body parts to get bigger. But a strap that doesn’t fit snug would be useless for protection. Given that everything is snug when properly in place, getting even a slight hard-on could be interesting but also make matters worse. What if I should ejaculate while wearing or even just getting into a strap? Does this happen to the other guys? The bigger guys seem to take this all in stride. How do they learn how to do that so nonchalantly, anyway?

It’s the same problem guys have when they begin to focus on the need to wear other kinds of snug-fitting clothing. In the 1950s and 60s, manufacturers were a long way from being able to sell other kinds of stretchy body-protective gear like we routinely see today.

The other problem straps have is that the basic strap leave’s a guy’s butt crack completely uncovered. Wearing a strap in the locker room is not THAT much different from wandering around the locker room nude. Why this was such an important part of the design of traditional straps has never been entirely clear to me. The leg straps clearly kept the ‘nads in a “safe place”. These were the “bicycle helmets” of the 1950s and 60s. If you engaged in sport, you had to wear one. All the guys did and you needed to do likewise or you were not an athlete. But couldn’t anyone come up with a design that had leg straps yet covered your butt with some cloth. What was this idea of athletes all being butt-naked, anyway?

True, in later years, after thong underwear and swimwear for men took off, some of the companies did come up with a thong style supporter, one that put a narrow piece of elastic between a guy’s glutes, but was that really a significant improvement? Straps were great in the locker room so long as all the guys had to wear them, and getting over the initial embarrassment of being seen by your peers wearing one was mitigated if all the guys were wearing them. But, as soon as other possibilities emerges, say a compression brief with a pouch for a hard cup, the traditional straps declined rapidly in popularity. It was an “everyone does this or we all do not kind of thing”.

So, the market for straps evaporated as other options became the accepted norm and coaches everywhere no longer required them as a condition for playing a sport. The traditional straps are still sold mainly by online vendors, but most of these I suspect are for what I call the recreational wear market. Guys are buying these because they thing being strapped is a fun way to masturbate or perhaps engage in sex play with a male partner wearing something similar. Part of the market also caters to the “strap-curious” teen guy who simply wants to see how he would look wearing a strap and whether or not the fit and feel is erotic. This is all just part of growing up!

To be continued…
 

Part XXXVII
 

Part XXXVII

Then there are the cups, traditionally worn over parts of the body where contact in the groin area is a real possibility, say a baseball player dealing with a pitch that went way awry, with the danger of doing serious damage to the male sexual organs. Since the strap held the guy’s nads close to the body, it was only logical to think about using the pouch to hold a cup made of an impact-resistant plastic to protect the area.

The cups that were made for the traditional straps, to put is bluntly, were not very big. They were designed to contain a guy’s flaccid penis, with little room to spare. The smaller size also meant that the presence of a cup would not be easily observable once a clothing item, say baseball or football pants were placed over the cup.

All well and good, except of course, every guy knows that his penis does not always stray the same size. There is a “normal” variation that occurs over the course of a day. Further, generally penises are fond of being in a confined space. And a modestly-sized hard cup is, well, a confined space, perhaps not the “perfect” confined space, but still not a “normal” situation either. The mere thought of being in a confined space sometimes causes interesting “reactions” on the part of a penis. Let alone actually being in one.

Penises are expert in a seeming 6th sense about the situation they are in, space-wise and knowing exactly how to use the available space. Put a penis inside a cup of sufficient size to hold it flaccid, and unless the guy attached to the penis is completely brain–dead the penis will expand just enough to fill the available space, seemingly sensing exactly where the walls of the cup are reminding the guy on a constant basis where the cup walls are. These sensations can be fun, but they can also be infuriating especially if a guy is trying to focus his brain on playing the sport, not the interesting and happy sensations emanating from the groin area. Is this really a situation where you want to be horny.

Some guys may think that getting off while wearing a cup would be an easy task and the game would be much better played post-ejaculation with perhaps no one being the wiser. But getting off while wearing even a snug-fitting cup is not easy. True, the penis is sending back all the interesting signals about what is going on in the immediate vicinity, but it likes to just hang there enjoying itself. A guy can press on the cup or tap it repeatedly while still wearing it, and this may have the net effect of sending the penis off into a slightly higher arousal level but normally still not enough for a full-scale ejaculation to.

Another option is to pull the cup away from the body for only a few seconds. Momentarily relieved from the confinement of the cup, the penis expands a bit more. Then the cup snaps back to the body, the now slightly bigger penis entering a more interesting state still. This is great fun to do but you probably don’t want to be engaging in a team sport if you try this.

So, the strap and cup manufacturers probably figured out that the snug-fitting straps and cups they were selling had these “problems” for guys, and set about to fix the problems.

The so-called Banana® cup was one of the first attempt to design a larger, not as confining but still protective cup, with enough space inside so that a guy’s penis could flop around inside the cup without feeling that it was “confined”. (Banana is a registered trade name) The cup was shaped more or less like a hollowed out banana.

A basic problem with the banana cup was that it was a big piece of “hardware” that had to somehow fit between a guy’s legs. It was not like the smaller traditional cups that were easy to disguise. These have proven popular with college and professional football players, and photos you see of them often reveal either that the player is very amply endowed or must be wearing one of these.

These cups are typically so big that they really don’t work for all but a few sports, football being the major example. So, there have also been attempts to design smaller versions of these cups that are not as big a piece of hardware. But as the size comes down, so does the amount of available space. An adult can wear a cup made for a young teen, but that may very well be about as confining as an old-style cup.

To be continued…

Part XXXVIII
 

Part XXXVIII

A guy getting into his first strap, but especially one with a hard cup, is probably at least as apprehensive as he would be contemplating getting himself into his first swim brief. How does it feel? Will I immediately get a hard on? What happens if I get a hard-on inside a cup? These are all important and interesting questions, and parallel the concerns guys have about first getting into and then wearing a swim brief in public.

It is funny how these kinds of concerns “play” with a guy’s brain. Guys think that somehow it should be easy to ignore being apprehensive about it all. Still, it doesn’t take long for a guy to discover that his brain and body “like” feeling horny, and in the absence of engaging in sex with a partner situations like this are something of a substitute, embarrassing as the thoughts might be. Male sexual arousal triggering mechanisms quickly get into complicated stuff, including some stuff that happens and appears to make no sense at all. Guys keep thinking that they should be able to turn arousal on and off and that a guy’s penis should be readily told what to do on orders from the brain. Well, yes and no!

At some point most guys probably realize that getting aroused in the absence of a sexual partner is a good thing not a bad thing to be able to do, and if a swim brief, strap, or whatever aids in the process that is a good thing not a bad thing as well.

I have found that straps with cups can be really enjoyable to wear. Sometimes I like to just slip on a strap, kick back and see where my body wants to take me. I guess practically everyone has things they like to do to kick back and relax from the daily grind. The fun part about straps and cups is that they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and each one fits and feels a little different on the penis. Some of them feel simply more than a bit uncomfortable with no real erotic sensations at all, then all of a sudden the sensations morph from uncomfortable to something really erotic and wonderful, and this transition may occur quite rapidly, in the space of but a few seconds.

I recommend that every guy run some experiments on his own body and see exactly how you respond. What makes arousal so interesting is that the sensations change from one moment to the next, like riding a giant wave. Your penis will tell you if it is in a happy place or not when it is confined.

This is generally a core part of male sexuality, alone or with a partner, and there is absolutely no problem running a few experiments with your own body in private. In the process you may learn some things about being male you did not know before, and be able to use that information in subsequent partner-sex episodes as well. With something this interesting and essentially no down side, why not?

To be continued…

Part XXXIX
 

Part XXXIX

The history of companies like Speedo® Jockey® and Bike® go back a long way to the 1930s, 1920s, and in the case of Bike back into the 19th century. Each of these companies came up with an iconic design (The Speedo® swim brief, the Jockey® brief underwear and the Bike® athletic supporter) that changed in fundamental ways how guys needed to deal with clothing that fit snugly in the groin area. A “dark secret” is that each of these offerings probably also changed in fundamental ways how guys “played” with themselves as well as each of these items ended up being used while engaging in masturbation.

No guy ever wants to admit to others that he gets himself off while wearing certain items of clothing—it’s just too embarrassing on a host of different levels, not the least of which such an admission could be interpreted as having some sort of abnormal clothing “fetish”. Indeed, the so called sex experts, psychologists who counsel patients, seem more or less stumped by this too. There seems to be general agreement among these experts now that masturbation—even frequently—is OK and this is not a sign that a guy has a problem of some sort that needs to be resolved in relating to the inability to pair with possible sexual partners.

Indeed, these same experts have become advocates for masturbation “aids” such as lubricants, vibrators and a variety of other sex toys such as electronic masturbation sleeves. Still, the guy who likes to get off wearing a simple swim brief or strap must have a problem of some sort, and he could make himself normal again by instead purchasing one of these expensive sex toys designed for males!

Besides, a swim brief or a strap used in this fashion can be far more easily explained away as being for something other than masturbation play if discovered by your college roommate than some goofy vibrating male sex toy that has only one purpose. Being able to conceal one’s personal masturbation methods is important for a lot of guys, guys in a sexual relationship with a partner or not.

So the history of compression gear made from snug-fitting fabric is much more recent than for the other items I have discussed. One could argue that compression gear only became popular with guys to any real degree after the Under Armor® company was founded, and that did not happen until 1996. If you read the history of that company, their first important product was not the compression shorts but the compression tee, a shirt that covered a guy’s chest in a snug-fitting fabric that, unlike cotton, wicked the sweat and moisture away, while also claiming compression benefits for upper body muscles. By the late 1990s compression tees were hugely popular with male athletes and the fact that they put chest muscles on display while still covering the chest was part of the appeal.

But the compression tee was shortly followed by the compression shorts, that kept everything snug and tight down below as well. Suddenly wearing a strap to do this as well seemed unnecessary. Besides, the sloppy shorts the major NBA stars were wearing suddenly started showing another kind of short underneath, a short that fit snug to the thighs. What was that, anyway? Why compression shorts as well. A lot of guys in the NBA were wearing a compression tee under their team sleeveless jersey, and compression shorts under the sloppy team shorts. A well-appointed athlete had compression undergarments both top and bottom, and Under Armor® compression gear sales soared.

Several things were going on here of interest. First, the compression shorts were seen by a lot of guys as a reasonable substitute for a traditional strap in terms of keeping the ‘nads in place. If a guy needed to wear a hard cup for additional protection, why not just build a pouch inside the compression short to hold one. Sales of traditional straps floundered, as a result.

Beside, most guys think of their upper thighs as being important, potentially erogenous zones of their anatomy, and a lot of guys like garments that fit really snug to the upper thighs. Compression shorts did that.

The fact that the compression gear fabrics were really slick and smooth helped as well. Wearing compression gear as shorts took off at about the same time that competitive swimmers started wearing jammers instead of briefs. It is not possible to know exactly how guys were dealing with all of this from a self-pleasuring perspective, but one could certainly make some educated guesses as to what must have been happening on that front too, that compression gear, like other clothing items that fit snug in the groin area, became important to a lot of guys as a convenient method to employ while self-pleasuring. Not that any guy would ever admit that was going on for sure! But it almost had to be. A guy would likely put on his compression gear, tees and shorts, and have some fun with himself whenever he had a degree of privacy.


Like I said, sales of compression gear from Under Armor® and other sports clothing manufacturers took off starting in the late 1990s. You don’t think all of this stuff was sold to serious athletes, do you?

Like so much else in male self-pleasuring, one must try and put two and two together! Can reality be that mysterious? The teen non-athlete will have a lot easier time explaining to his parents that he needs a pair of compression tee, than, say a swim brief or strap! Did I mention that you can walk into the male underwear section of any Walmart and see a host of different designs for underwear that look and feel almost like compression shorts? I like to put two and two together. If guys want to buy underwear to use when masturbating, why should the manufacturers care? A sale is a sale!

To be continued…

Part XXXX
 

Part XXXX

I have been looking into the history of the wrestling singlet, in part in search of information as to whether or not there was a particular company that introduced the idea of a snug-fitting one-piece suit, in the same way that Speedo was important to the idea of a swim brief. I did not come up with a specific name, but here are three links I read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling_singlet
https://intermatwrestle.com/articles/17094
and
https://www.ciscoathletic.com/blog/e...tling-uniform/

The closest I have been to coming up with a name is Russell Athletic, but that gets complicated as well, as does the history of Russell. Into the 90s, Russell was by far the largest supplier of major league baseball uniforms as well as uniforms for a variety of other professional and college sports, but more recently they have been overrun by the big names Nike®, Adidas®, and even under Armor®. Russell was bought out by Fruit-of-the-Loom, which itself became part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and now appears to be largely out of the business of making team uniforms at least beyond the high school level.

What I learned from my reading is that the idea of a one-piece singlet dates only back to the 1960s when the NCAA made those required wear in college wrestling matches. A basic rule in wrestling is that grabbing an opponent’s uniform during a match is not allowed and, even if accidental could result in disqualification. The one –piece snug-fitting singlet made that more difficult. But wrestlers over history have often engaged in the sport bare-chested, wearing only a jammer-type of short, and that there are also two-piece uniforms called doublets which consist either of a compression tee or sleeveless A-shirt and compression-like shorts.

The debate going on currently is by high school coaches who believe that for potential young wrestlers the idea of wearing a snug-fitting singlet deters participation if only something else would be allowed for attire. Whenever I hear about guys being scared to wear something, I keep thinking back to the uneasy relationship a lot of potential male swimmers have with the idea of wearing a swim brief. That the briefs are “too revealing” is a way of communicating the idea that the potential swimmer is scared (terrified) of getting a hard-on while getting into a brief in the gym locker room or worse, showing that he is hard out in public and therefore if this ids the required costume for swimmers the only way out is to not participate at all.

So too, probably with wrestling singlets. Even though a singlet covers a lot more of the body than a swim brief, the fit is skin-tight, and the “unfortunate”condition of the engorged penis under the singlet is not easily hidden. This is complicated by the fact that there is no specific rule regarding what is worn in the groin area under the singlet. A traditional athletic supporter? That has its own set of issues. A pair of underwear briefs such as tighty whiteys? Or maybe nothing at all! So guys who might make good wrestlers opt out because of a similar fear that some male swimmers have of wearing a swim brief in competition.

I own several wrestling singlets. They make, well, an interesting choice of uniform when I engage in stationary rowing. Many competitive rowers wear something very similar. Wrestling singlets come in a lot of different sizes from XXXS to XXXL, so that no matter what the wrestler’s weight class is, the fit will always be very snug to the body. So it behooves the wrestler to get the size right.

Getting in and out of a singlet can be tricky. The especially tricky part is getting the shoulder straps in place. Generally the shoulder straps seem short. In an effort to get the shoulder straps in place given this, one must tug the suit up into the crotch. This ends up being an interesting experience for me, as this involves tugging the suit into the groin area. If this is, well, interesting to try to do, I can’t imagine the complicated problem that a beginning male wrestler might suddenly be facing. Well, I guess I can. And therein is the dilemma. Of course, a larger size could be chosen, but that will mean that the wrestling “fit” is lost.

My other singlets are Asics® and they go on without too much difficulty, but I do have one Russell® branded singlet that is labeled M rather than SM. The shoulder straps on that one are all but impossible to get into without some major tugging and pulling. Quite an adventure, to say the least.

The other problem with a singlet is that if a guy discovers he needs to use the rest room after he is in the singlet, getting out may be even more difficult than getting in. It appears to me that high school and maybe even college wrestling is about to move away from the requirement of wearing a one piece suit in order to participate, but right now this is by no means universal. Amazon and other on line retailers are filled with firms willing to make custom wrestling singlets with designs specific to a particular school or team. I do not see this going away any time soon.

To be continued…
 

Part XXXXI
 

Part XXXXI

A wrestling singlet may not be the garment of choice for every guy interested in all of this, but compression gear nowadays is so commonly available that it doesn’t even attract a second glance if a guy is seen wearing it. The only real debate centers on the idea of whether or not compression shorts are themselves an undergarment and thus should be covered with a looser-fitting, if shorter, pair of shorts (like some of the NBA players) or whether compression gear can be worn as an outer garment. Both are commonly done, and the manufacturers seem to not be certain either, given that some garments that look like compression gear have a fly, which says this is being sold for wear under a looser-fitting pair of shorts.

Me, well I am stationary rowing, cycling, and weightlifting every day, and the outdoor temperature these days is running 95 degrees F. I’m sure all my neighbors have seen me wandering about my yard in just my gear, and no one has said anything to me about it. I got up this morning thinking about what ideas or tips I would like to give other guys who want to wear compression gear and the possibility of doing this starts to trigger the familiar arousal mechanism that we all enjoy so much.

There is nothing quite like some new compression gear to set a guy off and get him moving in this regard (other than a new swim brief, perhaps). Here are some ideas for making your encounter most enjoyable.
1. Undersize! Undersize! Always undersize a little, but particularly on the shorts. Having the question “Am I ever going to be able to get myself into these shorts?” bouncing around in your head on the first encounter is a good thing not a bad thing to have happen. Merely contemplating that question should help you along with where you are wanting to go. Can you undersize too much? Possibly, but you won’t know that until you run some experiments to find out. If you undersize the compression tees too much you might have difficulty getting yourself out of them.

2. What to wear underneath? Some guys probably go commando, but I have long felt that the proper garment worn underneath compression shorts is part of the overall experience. If you are into swim briefs, a skimpy swim brief might make sense. But this is also a place to try some of the other options I have been discussing. An old school strap is an interesting choice, for example, or that pair of thong underwear that you found stuck back in dresser drawer. But my personal favorite has long been an undersized pair of tighty whiteys, which have the extra advantage of padding my butt a bit when I am exercising on my rowing and cycling machines. I keep a fresh supply of tighty whiteys on hand in various sizes, and make a sizing choice on any given day based on how horny I would like to feel that day.

3. Getting into your gear, just let nature do what it wants to do and try to avoid sdirectly troking or rubbing various sensitive body parts. Part of the fun is getting to experiment with how your body responds to the new situation it faces once inside the gear and you won’t be able to research this if you immediately go into a stroking and touching mode. Your body is fully capable of adjusting to a situation like this, and it is important to understand exactly what happens in your particular situation without using your hands in an effort to move things forward. Just let whatever wants to happen, happen.

4. I want to impress on you the importance of learning that sexual arousal is not just about your penis and balls, but is a total mind and body experience encompassing your entire being. Further, parts of your body that you perhaps did not realize, your upper chest, your thighs, etc are sexual hot spots as well, at least for a lot of guys, and having these body parts encased in the gear is part of the experience. Once you are in, take a look at yourself and make mental notes of how everything you are wearing fits and feels. You might observe that your penis on its own seems to be reacting to the situation, but that is part of the fun and part of the discovery process.


All of these ideas obviously are excellent for a guy who does not have a sexual partner and simply wants to add something interesting, new and potentially exciting to what otherwise was a simple jerk-off experience. But these ideas could also be very valuable in partner sex as well, but especially if you have somehow landed a sexual partner who also enjoys wearing snug-fitting compression gear. The sexual partner could be either male or female. This is an “equal opportunity” activity for both sexes. If the partner is into the gear as well (given what you know from your solo experiences you quickly gain status as a “teacher”). Or perhaps you and your partner can both teach each other some interesting stuff about taking full advantage of the gear as part of the arousal mechanism.

Exploring a potential partner’s interest in this sort of thing is the trickiest part. Once again, I think two gay guys may have an easier time with this part than a male-female couple, but drawing any general conclusion in that regard is difficult to do.

Also keep in mind that although seeing how rapidly you could take yourself from flaccid penis to full erection and ejaculation may have seemed to be a noble goal when you were, say, 13, and still in an early-learning mode, the goal now is always to see how long you can maintain not only arousal but also a firm erection without coming. And in this regard you may find the compression gear to be quite helpful in getting you to the point where you want to be without going over the edge. Unless, of course you hear your college roommate walking down the hall and about to enter the room!

My final recommendation is that if you do not have a partner, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to avoid proceeding. If your college roommate wants to join in the fun, that is between you and him (or her, as the case may be!) As always, make sure to enjoy yourself!

To be continued…
 

Part XXXXII
 

Part XXXXII

For some time I have been thinking about writing a few chapters dealing with snug-fitting skinny jeans. This may seem a bit off-topic from the subject of swim briefs and wrestling singlet. But I keep thinking that some of my earliest and best experiments in “self abuse” involved tight-fitting jeans. And, come to think of it, a couple of my most embarrassing instances where my fondness for my own body happened rather unexpectedly and in a semi-public setting. Still, all of these schemes have been bubbling inside me for a long time, and it is time to write about what was going on.

But, where should I start the story? The best strategy would be to start at the beginning, or at least the beginning for me. The first thing to note is that jeans styles for men go from skinny to loose and back again over very large cycles. We are currently at a point where really form-fitting jeans are at the height of fashion for men, and this latest cycle really only got going 7 or 8 years ago. The last time form-fitting jeans were really popular was when I was in high school and then in college, from about 1961-1969. In between, jeans generally got very loose or relaxed.

Maybe I can help you understand this better by talking about the brands and colors of what were then called slim fitting jeans in the decade of the 1960s. During that decade, jeans sales were dominated by two brands, Levis® and Wrangler®. There always has been two markets for jeans, a so-called western wear market and a general public non-western wear (general public) market. Western wear styles were made to go with the other aspects of the “cowboy” look A form-fitting colorful shirt with snaps rather than buttons, the cowboy hat, the leather cowboy boots etc. This was a look popular is much of rural north America, but seemed odd in most urban areas (except maybe in Texas). The tricky part is that guys always wanted to wear their jeans OVER their cowboy boots, (boots over jeans is universally thought of as nerdy) which meant that even a snug-fitting jean could taper to no narrower than a 15-16 inch cut.

Generally, the cut for western wear featured a fairly high rise and a very snug-fitting butt, along with a snug taper in the thigh, but then the taper from the knee down was less severe co accommodate the leather boot.

Levis competed with both the western wear designs and in designs for the urban public. Wrangler focused on the western wear designs with the snug-fitting butts aimed at markets the rural areas. This look was so popular in many rural areas that the guys who wore the Wranglers were referred to as “Wrangler butts.” Even today, the jeans with the iconic vinyl “Wrangler” patch on the right rear pocket are sometimes referred to as the “real” Wranglers and the ones without as not the real thing, even if Wrangler-branded.

Some of the Levis designs focused on the same western wear market to compete directly against Wrangler, such what we currently know as styles 505 and 501, and cowboys divided themselves into Wrangler or Levis guys. Levi tried to emulate the look of the Wrangler butt but somehow never quite succeeded to the extent that Wrangler did on this score.

But Levis was also selling jeans into the urban market—that is, those who would not be wearing cowboy boots, and that meant that they could make jeans that tapered much more sharply than Wrangler from the knee to the ankle. This was a long time before the addition of Elastane to denim was common, and so the minimum taper was about 13 inches.

In that same period, prewashed jeans were all but unheard of. Blue jeans were mostly sold as stiff, unwashed blue denim, with the idea that the buyer would purchase these an inch or two oversized, and via multiple washing the denim would shrink to conform to the guy’s particular body. The original 501 jeans were all shrink-to-fit with charts that showed exactly what size you need to buy in order to get a snug body-conforming fit over several washings. The 501’s probably shrunk more than, say a 936 slim-fit Wrangler jean, but guys started slightly oversized there as well recognizing that they would get the Wrangler butt fit they wanted.

Still there was another option that was very popular in the 1960s, and that was jeans made from denim that had not been dyed blue. Undyed denim is softer than dyed denim, and is an off-white color that at that point in time was referred to as “sand”. Form-fitting jeans made from sand-colored denim were very popular in the 1960s, but especially those with leg openings that tapered to only 13 inches. All the well-dressed guys were wearing them, and even Wrangler started selling their 936 slim tapered jeans in the popular sand color. It was possible to dye the off-white denim other colors, say a light blue, but none pf the other colors were ever nearly as popular as the sand color.

In the 1960s, guys my age would all seem to be vying to see who could wear the snuggest-fitting jeans, usually the sand-colored ones. Me too. Shopping for my first pair of sand-colored jeans taught me a lot about precumming and the odd situations where it would happen.


All of this ended more or less in the 70s with the introduction first of bell bottom jeans that tapered sharply through the thigh to the knee and then flared out to a 17- or 18-inch cuff. After that we went through 30 years or more of relaxed fit jeans where almost none were tapered and form fitting save the Wrangler patch jeans destined for the “cowboy” market.

To be continued…

Part XXXXIII
 

Part XXXIII

The Wrangler® jeans with the iconic patch have long been worn as work wear by guys in rural areas, but in particular by guys living in rural areas designated as ranching rather than farming. They are part of a larger “cowboy dress” that also includes leather cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and a tapered western shirt that fits snug to the chest with pearl snaps instead of buttons. Interestingly, over the years, the popularity of most of these items has gradually declined in recent years, as more general work shirts gradually replaced the form-fitting ones with the pearl snaps, wide-brimmed cowboy hats got replaced with wide-brimmed baseball style caps with an appropriate farm-related logo, and round-toe work books with low heels replaced the narrow-toed boots with the higher tapered heels favored by “real” cowboys (who actually own a horse).

But, the one item that stays is the patch-logo wrangler jean—the jean associated with the so-called Wrangler butt look. Do a Google image search on “wrangler butt” and you will get a good idea of what exactly this entails. The tailoring of the jean fits snuggly to and really emphasizes the glutes of the cowboy and is nearly a trademark in itself. In addition, the jean tapers sharply through the guy’s thighs, which are also emphasized in the look, but then from the knee downward the jeans have only a slight taper. Wrangler sells two versions, the regular (937) cut and the more form-fitting (936), but guys looking for a better Wrangler butt fit squeezing themselves into the 936 version.

Both versions are also sold made of rigid unwashed denim as opposed to the prewashed versions, for guys wanting to shrink the jeans to fit their specific body. The whole idea is that the normal work of the cowboy accompanied by regular washings will create a jean with body-conforming wear patterns.

I’m not certain where the term “Wrangler butt” originated but it is now widely used as slang (usually by women) for a young ranch hand who lives on a ranch with cattle and horses and lives the life of a “real” cowboy who works with cattle and perhaps rides a horse regularly as well. It is something of a female term of endearment that also happens to apply to the fit of the jeans! Of course, at professional rodeos the Wrangler butts are everywhere, and this is part of the appeal of that sport to young women, who go to such events as much to see the Wrangler butts as to watch the competitions!

With a properly-fitting Wrangler butt fit, the jeans will not only fit snug to the glutes, but the center rear seam of the jeans will cinch up between the gluts, almost like the cord of a thong back. https://rugby.blogberth.com/2018/09/...glers-ought-t/


If you wander into any Walmart, you will find many jeans with the Wrangler brand name. But you will only find those with the iconic large Wrangler right pocket patch on what are called in some circles the “real” Wranglers. For a lot of young guys growing up in the country, getting one’s first pair of real Wrangler jeans is something of a male rite of passage of sorts, with the realization that many females their age might also take note of them and their bodies.

Whatever else has happened in the design and cut of jeans over the past 50 or more years from the 1960s onward, the Wrangler-butt jeans for the real cowboys have stayed nearly constant in design cut and fit. Today I could purchase almost an exact copy of the same jean that was readily available in the 1960s and before.

To be continued…