[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos Part II

It’s funny. There is a strong “herding instinct” among a lot of young males. This is especially true when it comes to clothing, but particularly in undergarments. A lot of guys make choices based on what other guys are wearing, or maybe what they THINK other guys are wearing. From the mid 1950s and through much of the 1969s, the underwear of choice was the white cotton brief. Why? Because that is what the other guys were wearing. Loose-fitting blue plaid boxer shorts had yet to make an appearance. If you wanted to be one of the guys, you wore a white cotton brief. This was not a debate topic. That is how it is.

Of course, a pair of white cotton briefs CAN fit rather snug, but this did not seem to bother guys in the least. I have often thought that there was a bit of “I’m bigger than you are down there” maleness rearing its head, but that is only a theory. If my briefs fit tighter and my bulge shows bigger that is good not bad bit especially so if ever guy is wearing basically the same cotton brief.

Young guys tend to go through a lot of underwear growing up. And young guys tend to hit a rapid growth spurt shortly after puberty, where the underwear that fit maybe a year ago or even six months ago tend to be too small right now. In the case of a cotton brief it might be worn out but it might just be too small. Still, guys no doubt learn that a snug-fitting brief has its merits, even a brief that the guy has almost grown out of. Aside by continuing to wear these as regular underwear (You don’t have to replace these right now mom, I can still wear these!), guys have been known to keep some undersized pairs in the back of the bedroom drawer to use for masturbation purposes.

The same applies to clothing like blue jeans. That pair I wore last year has gotten really snug on me since I have grown, but I still like to wear them. And some of the guys in school think I look great in them.

You may think guys discovered snug-fitting jeans in the last decade or so. But there was another round of this in the early 1960s when guys really got interested in jeans that fit really snug. Sand-colored undyed denim jeans were really popular, and when I was 15 or 16, some of the guys in my class seemed to be running an informal contest to see who could come to school in the jeans with the tightest fit.

Of course, some of the guys discovered that masturbating in clothing that consisted of a tight pair of cotton briefs with a snug fitting pair of jeans over could be a lot of fun too. The semen would be enough to create a dark stain somewhere on the jeans. But where? And if this happened would someone call attention to it? Dangerous in that respect, but still fun!

So, back in the 1950s and 1960s we have all these guys whose clothing consists of snug white cotton briefs with tight, sand-colored jeans over. For swimwear, making the transition from the popular plaid cotton swimsuit with the mesh lining to a real swim brief was perhaps not that big of a deal except that the early swim briefs were all nylon, and only later did the poly stretch Lycra briefs show up. Guys were used to knowing how the ribbed cotton of their brief underwear felt down there and had managed to learn to control their urges. And they were used to being in situations where other guys clad in cotton briefs would see them. But now the idea of a small-and-slick-nylon swim brief might be pushing it. The classic question of course is will wearing such a suit with slick fabric give me an erection at an inopportune time and will I be able to adequately cope with the situation. But still, the swim brief is not that much different from the standard issue cotton underwear that all the guys wore daily.

So, my theory is that when white cotton briefs were almost universal, at least for males living in the US, the transition a Speedo--or more generally, any brief-style swimsuit--was not nearly as big a deal as it has been recently, when guys are instead favoring loose-fitting plaid boxer shorts as underwear. The boxer shorts as underwear led right into the knee-length board shorts for swimming. Still, young males are subject to a herding instinct whereby they really want to wear what the other guys think is acceptable, and definitely not go off in some new path, and particularly not a new path that would identify a guy as a “serial masturbator”. Even the admission that you masturbate could result in issues with peers (who also masturbate but dare not admit it) at some future point in time.