Slate Article: Why Are Guys Afraid to Wear Speedos?

[Torchwatch]

The Amazonian natives who wore just a string about their waists said on documentaries that it identified them as human, differentiating themselves from the animals.
In England until well into the reign of Elizabeth I a vagrant in a town could be flogged or executed. The vagrants unable to find work or food ended up starving and naked on the heaths. Anyone travelling between towns faced being robbed and perhaps murdered by the vagrants. Even in the 20th Century those arrested for indecent exposure were charged under the Vagrancy Act.
Today to be seen as a citizen and not a vagrant you need money (cash and credit cards), identification (driving/ers licence), keys (to home and transport) and of late a mobile phone. To carry this lot you need a wallet and pockets, even if you take all the stuff out of your pockets to swim in the sea, the pockets are still symbolic of the items removed, in the same way that a string around the waist is symbolic of access to stone age technology.
Put on your speedos, swim or walk out of sight of your pile of clothes and you become a vagrant with no visible means of support; no identity, money, transport or home. As a speedo lover you are happy with this, you don't need all the junk you left in your pockets to be able to be yourself. However many others do, next time you are in a bar look out for the guys who display their identity in a little pile in front of them on the table; the cigarettes, lighter, mobile phone and car keys. Without all this junk for all to see they would become nobodies, and the bigger, baggier and "pocketier" their board shorts become the more somebody they feel they are.