Missing the "Good Old Days"

[Torchwatch]

Imagine if you could only buy sports cars in sports shops and even then only painted black, and that you could only buy open top convertibles in sex shops painted red, while you had to got to a camping store to get a green SUV but if you wanted a standard grey hatchback you could go to your local supermarket. This is what has happened to men's swimwear, if you want a thong or a bikini you have to go to sex shop, if you want racing swim briefs to a sports shop while you can pop into any supermarket and get multicoloured swim shorts that will prove a drag in the water.
Men going into sex shops are usually coy about what they've bought, in public serious swimmers would rather not be associated with sex shops but might wear swim shorts to blend in on a public beach and the guys that wear big baggy shorts to go to the pub aren't expecting to do much swimming or to get much sex.
The men swimming lengths and the mothers of the boys doing swimming lessons would rather not have a single word that places their swim briefs in the same category as the thongs and bikinis sold in the sex shop.
The guys in the big baggy shorts cluttering up the public beaches aren't doing much swimming or getting much sex and will happily put thong, bikini and racing briefs wearers in a single unpleasant category.
So maybe a little ambiguity is desirable, racing swim briefs are for serious swimming, swim thongs and bikinis are for serious sunning and you don't have to go to the sex shop to buy them.