Has the battle been lost?
I’m very glad I grew up in a time when wearing a Speedo* to the pool or beach may have been slightly bold, but was certainly acceptable. For swim team kids like me, it just signified that you were a real swimmer.
* [for purposes of this discussion, I’m going to go with common usage rather than corporate copyright: a “Speedo” is a traditional nylon or Lycra brief swimsuit originally designed for competition.]
When I moved to Hawaii, normal beach attire for me and most of my friends was a pair of Surfline Hawaii cotton jams (the original board shorts) with a Speedo under. Nobody wore trunks with built-in liner. When it was time to get wet, you’d shed the jams which would stay damp the rest of the day and attract sand if you got them wet, and just wear your Speedo into the water. If you cared about your Speedo tanline, you’d then keep the jams off until it was time to hit a restaurant or drive home. At every beach, you’d always see others similarly attired.
The Pride movement marginalized Speedos, being adopted as a Gay uniform. Although their utility and practicality remained, fewer men who weren’t “friends of Dorothy” selected them as their casual swimsuit of choice. Still, virtually all lap pool and serious ocean swimmers wore one.
Fast forward a few decades …
The last time I visited Hawaii, I saw ZERO Speedos! I expected that in Waikiki where tourists don’t need special gear to splash in the waves. At Kaimana Beach, where ocean swimmers launch their distance workouts, none were in sight. Even Queens Surf Beach, long THE spot to see and be seen in Speedos, was Speedo-free.
When you swim/dive/surf in the ocean, one of the first things you learn is that given any opportunity, the salt in salt water dries into razor sharp crystals that combine with friction from whatever you’re wearing to cause chafing, crotch raspberries, infections, and pain. Wearing a Speedo minimizes that - wearing trunks maximizes it. Yet, the standard men’s beach garb has now become loose trunks, commonly worn with underwear peaking out the waistband. Ugh, just ugh! Meanwhile, women’s swimwear has gotten smaller and smaller, with T-back bare butt swimsuits normalized.
Where did we go wrong?
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