Sports clothing and eroticism

[singletlover]

When I wrestled in public school I was issued a 100% nylon (not smooth but heavy, scratchy with no stretch) singlet. It was made by a company called Pro Knit Wear. A jock strap was also issued. Cups were not worn since they would move out of position and I was told caused more discomfort.

When I coached other than the singlets being made of nylon/spandex everything has remained the same. I coached in the early 80's and the boys were very excited to wear their singlet, as compared to todays kids.

I still have all my singlets somewhere in a box.

[sebbie]

The male rite of passage

In the 1950s and 60s, for many if not most boys, there was a male rite of passage that marked the end of childhood and the beginning of being a young adult. You probably think that this must be the first real orgasm that a guy has while wide awake, but this time I am thinking of something else.

What I am thinking about is the first time a guy is required to wear a strap, and probably a cup as well. At early ages, guys may not think their private parts need to be not only contained but protected from injury from the outside. I suppose the young baseball players are the first to be told that they need to wear a cup if they are going to play on a team. Part of this is something of a male tribal ritual that calls the notion that a guy’s organs are really important parts of his anatomy that should not be damaged in any way.

Getting a first strap and cup was always a “learning experience” for a young male. At some level, getting one’s head around the idea that he must wear this and still successfully play the sport was part of the challenge. But doing this was made easier by knowing that all the other guys on the team were required to do the same thing. Still, that strap looked mean as all get out. It fit closely to the body in all sorts of places, and gripped body parts quite securely. And adding the cup only increased the apprehension, as the guy knew trhe small cup would likely make itself quite noticeable bearing down on sensitive body parts. Still, the other guys were all doing the same thing, and if they managed, most guys were not going to back away. After all, wearing the jock and cup was a firm requirement for playing the sport.

Runners too, in the 1950s and 60s, liked to run in what we would now call short shorts—typically loose-fitting nylon shorts on occasion with a brief-style nylon lining made with the same material but sometimes unlined as well. Without additional protection, key body parts would simply flop around down there with every step. Basically, something needed to be worn so that the ‘nads stayed firmly in one place.

The solution, of course was to wear a strap of the appropriate size—large enough to enclose the genitalia and snug enough so the genitalia were largely held in one place step by step. A strap was generally an essential part of a runner’s running gear. But in the 50s and 60s straps tended to be rather “mean”, and as the runner took each step, those snug straps would cause chafing in the groin area wherever they came in close contact with the skin. The solution? Vaseline® of course. Routinely runners greased the entire groin area with Vaseline in all of the spots where the straps came in contact with the skin as well as where the edges of the pouch and the skin came in contact.

A runner might spend 15 or 20 minutes preparing himself for the run greasing himself up and getting his strap in exactly the proper position.

Bike® by far was the leading strap manufacturer with designs used without a cup and designs that generally included a cup. Cup designs in the 1950s tended to be smaller and less roomy than the ones we see today, but that made them more “interesting” to wear. Remember, compression gear had basically not been invented yet. The idea of wearing a compression short underneath the uniform with a cup pocket did not exist. Same for runners. Nowadays we thing of runners mainly wearing a pair of snug compression shorts with maybe a looser fitting pair of shorts that covers some of the compression short, but makes obvious the guy is wearing two layers.

The rise of the compression gear industry has had a lot to do with the decline of the jock strap industry. I suspect that the real straps now sell in only a fraction of the numbers they sold back then. Wikipedia provides a great history of the company here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIKE_Athletic_Company

Briefly, the article says the company was formed in 1874 and the early straps were intended for bicycle riders, hence the name. They also claim to have sold over 300 million straps over the years. Over the years they focused on “athletic protective gear”. They tried to market more general athletic clothing under the Bike name. I think the problem was that the Bike name was synonymous with jock strap and so marketing something under that brand was a non-starter,

The company was sold to the Russell company, another athletic wear brand. Russell became part of Fruit of the Loom, and FOTL was a brand owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s empire.Russell has had its own market problems, and in 2017 they discontinued making anything under the Bike label.

In my personal strap collection, I still have a few Bike® branded straps and some in pristine condition. I still regard being able to crawl into a strap as being a true male rite-of-passage thinking about all the guys who got to do this for the first time as young teens or even earlier. While compression gear is fun to wear too, every guy needs to have the experience of being strapped and cupped. It’s one of those great parts of just being a guy!

[singletlover]

Each season we passed out new jock straps to the team. Size was always a question--waist size that is. Of course all the boys, thinking the size was in reference to the pouch, wanted large. I still chuckle remembering this 85 pound boy requesting a large jock.

[sebbie]

So the straps were a requirement for engaging in the sport. I suppose it made as much sense for the school to provide the straps as it did for the school to provide the uniforms. But another issue might have been that the guy felt more than a little uncomfortable going to (probably back then) the local drug store to purchase one. And even telling your parents what you needed and letting them make the purchase was another potentially embarrassing situation.

The guys who were getting a strap for the first time were probably scared stiff. If the other guys said "Large' that is what you should say. But in straps a men's Large is a very different size from a boy's (aka "Youth") Large. The other problem strap manufacturers have is the lack of correlation between waist size and penis size, and straps are sold by waist size which assumes that as the waist gets bigger then the pouch size should get bigger too. But guys with a small waist may have a large penis. And vice versa. You see the fitting problem here.

I am reminded of the classic scene from the movie "Summer of 42" where the coming-of-age lad (actor Gary Grimes) decides he needs to have condoms. He goes to the drugstore and meets a friendly druggist and then hesitates to explain to the druggist what he is really looking for. It's a classic and funny movie scene as his predicament plays out relating to the embarrassment in just saying "I need a pack of condoms". In 1942, condoms were kept behind the counter in drug stores.

I can see guys in need of their first strap potentially facing a similar situation which is probably one reason why coaches passed out the straps.

[sebbie]

I’ve watched sports equipment change over many decades. I managed to dig out of my drawer one of my first straps. I’m thinking that the first one I bought was a bit bigger than this one, but this one still is from way back.

Not being a participant in any sports that required a strap, I think I got my first strap after I had moved away from home and was into college. But growing up, I was a tall but really skinny guy, and my weight at 5’10 was about 110 lbs. So that meant that I also had a really small waist.

This strap I purchased way back, but I do not recall exactly where I went or how I got to that point. I did not have the excuse the other guys had—that I needed it for a sport. I just liked the look and potentially the fit and feel of the strap. I knew I wanted a really snug fit. I also thought that a really tight strap would be fun to jerk off in, though that was an empirical “experiment” of sorts.

Anyhow, I somehow ended up with the strap you see here. As you can see the brand is MacGregor, a popular sports clothing brand in the day. The size is B R which stands for Boys Regular. Translated, that might be a size appropriate for a small 12-year old. Just getting into this was going to be something of a struggle even for me at my low body weight. But I was not buying the strap in order to wear it while engaging in a sport, unless you count what I had in my mind you could call a sport.

The measure says the waist measure but 9 inches across. Double that and you get 18 inches. But the waistband stretches a lot. I can still get into this, somewhat. The elastic still has a lot of stretch to it. That pouch looks to be more appropriate for a pre-pubescent boy, but that meant once I did get in it fit snug—really snug.

Oddly enough, otherwise this strap is still in reasonably good shape for being 50-years old or more. It has stained yellow in some interesting spots, but I would attribute that to the fact that cum-stains are often difficult to wash out completely, and what remains tends to gradually darken over time. Clearly, I had a lot of fun after I slipped on this strap.

Have my readers also kept sports clothing items like this that they bought when they were young?

[sebbie]

My first swim brief

I got my first swim brief sometime in 1970 or 71. In retrospect it was a fairly large but still a brief style. It was made of material that stretched quite a lot—not just nylon—and clung tightly to my skin. This was waist size 34 and the sides were about 4 inches. The brand name was Jantzen. Jantzen was famous for female swimwear and the brand logo was a photo of a female diver, even on the men’s suits. The pattern was a patriotic red, white and blue with stars.

Keep in mind that the Summer Olympics where Mark Spitz won seven swimming gold medals occurred in 1972 a little over a year later. The iconic photo of Spitz and his medals, clad only in a patriotic swim brief, became a famous wall poster. Spitz’ brief was not THAT different from my brief in cut, color or design. The sides look to me to be even wider, maybe closer to 5 inches. This was well before the period when the really skimpy narrow-sided briefs came into fashion among internationally-competitive swimmers. Spitz was only about two years younger than me, so I was of his generation.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/26d7969c...o1oo1_1280.jpg

A year or so later I got my first real Speedo® brief. That was still in a flag motif but much narrower sides and a skimpier cut all around. I liked that.

The funny part about this is that I still have the Jantzen brief. It is not in great shape but the stretch fabric still stretches and has not completely fallen apart. There is a use and care tag but that makes no mention as to what the fabric is made of. Looking on the Internet I found a vintage Jantzen brief made of Lycra and Polyamide with the Polyamide being nylon or close to it.

At some point, the Speedo® completely disintegrated and completely fell apart, and I had to throw it away. I will admit that the Speedo ended up taking more male abuse than the Jantsen did. Given the cut I rather liked it better. And Lycra briefs I have found often don’t hold up well when laundering out cum stains, stains that are sometime reluctant to dissolve and disappear. Whatever Jantsen did the fabric was very stretchy and form-fitting and had a much longer life that the Speedo fabric.

Still, I had a lot of fun in both of these briefs, and the Jantsen that is with me now still serves as a reminder to me of how truly great times once were for me.

[sebbie]

So, I tried getting into my old Jantzen swim brief last night. In the photos you saw of the brief it looked rather stretched out. But interestingly, it fit pretty well..only a bit baggy here and there and the colors were just a bit faded. But overall, it had a nice 70s "vibe" to it. I'm going to continue to hang on to this as an early representative of some of the first stretch fabric swim briefs.

I also tried wearing the really undersized MacGregor strap. Oddly enough, what appears to be an ultra-small waistband is able to stretch a lot. I remember just being able to get into it many years (40+) years ago. But I am still able to get it on and around my waist.

The trickier part is getting anything other than my penis into the pouch. the pouch is so small that my balls just want to stay outside.

I remember having the same struggle with it years ago. It takes a lot of attention and work to get myself entirely in the pouch where I should be. But I also understand why I liked being in this particular strap so much. Playing around in the effort is still quite enjoyable. A lot of guys might not find doing this that interesting, but its a stunt I would always enjoy doing. And it's a fun look in the mirror once I get myself all in place. This bigger guy with all his private parts compressed into this tiny strap...and nothing else.

[Mollyk]

Originally Posted by sebbie

I’ve watched sports equipment change over many decades. I managed to dig out of my drawer one of my first straps. I’m thinking that the first one I bought was a bit bigger than this one, but this one still is from way back.

Not being a participant in any sports that required a strap, I think I got my first strap after I had moved away from home and was into college. But growing up, I was a tall but really skinny guy, and my weight at 5’10 was about 110 lbs. So that meant that I also had a really small waist.

This strap I purchased way back, but I do not recall exactly where I went or how I got to that point. I did not have the excuse the other guys had—that I needed it for a sport. I just liked the look and potentially the fit and feel of the strap. I knew I wanted a really snug fit. I also thought that a really tight strap would be fun to jerk off in, though that was an empirical “experiment” of sorts.

Anyhow, I somehow ended up with the strap you see here. As you can see the brand is MacGregor, a popular sports clothing brand in the day. The size is B R which stands for Boys Regular. Translated, that might be a size appropriate for a small 12-year old. Just getting into this was going to be something of a struggle even for me at my low body weight. But I was not buying the strap in order to wear it while engaging in a sport, unless you count what I had in my mind you could call a sport.

The measure says the waist measure but 9 inches across. Double that and you get 18 inches. But the waistband stretches a lot. I can still get into this, somewhat. The elastic still has a lot of stretch to it. That pouch looks to be more appropriate for a pre-pubescent boy, but that meant once I did get in it fit snug—really snug.

Oddly enough, otherwise this strap is still in reasonably good shape for being 50-years old or more. It has stained yellow in some interesting spots, but I would attribute that to the fact that cum-stains are often difficult to wash out completely, and what remains tends to gradually darken over time. Clearly, I had a lot of fun after I slipped on this strap.

Have my readers also kept sports clothing items like this that they bought when they were young?

Keeps the business end of t he swimming up!!!!