Speedomania! The Swimsuit Gay Men Love

Oh, please! Part of AfterElton.com’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics is an article on Speedos? How shameless can we be?

But surely it’s a fact that for many gay and bisexual men, at least part of the appeal of the Summer Olympics is the endless parade of young, handsome, fit swimmers, divers, and water-polo players in this most form-fitting and revealing item of male attire. And then they get wet!

Hey, we never claimed to be ESPN.

Where did Speedo-type swimming suits come from? What do the athletes themselves think about them? And — the most important question of all — how much can we stretch the text of this article so as to include as many pictures as possible of hot men in their Speedos?

Swimming Naked

For almost all of human history, most men swam naked. And while the Ancient Greeks did not include a swimming competition in humankind’s first Olympic events, they did famously perform all their athletic competitions in the nude.

According to National Geographic, “The nude athletes would parade like peacocks up and down the stadium. Poets would write in a shaky hand these wonderful odes to the bodies of the young men, their skin the color of fired clay. But other cultures, like the Persians and the Egyptians, looked at these Greek men oiling one another down and writhing in the mud, and found it very strange. They believed it promoted sexual degeneracy.”

If the gay male reaction to diver Alexandre Despatie’s nearly-naked body during the last Summer Olympic Games is any indication, the Persians and Egyptians had a point.

Alexandre Despatie

In fact, the world’s first Speedo-like item of clothing probably wasn’t a swimsuit at all; it was most likely an undergarment. In 1991, archeologists discovered the frozen remains of “Otzi,” a man who lived in the Alps back in 3300 B.C. He was wearing a leather loincloth under his cloak.

The Ancient Egyptians likewise wore loincloths — including King Tut, whose priests had considerately included some in his tomb. Perhaps Mama Tut worried that her young son would have a chariot accident in the afterlife and wanted to make sure he had clean undies on just in case.

And all those paintings and sculptures of Jesus wearing a loincloth while nailed to the cross? Probably somewhat historically accurate. Historians are still divided, however, as to whether or not Jesus had such killer abs.

Some cultures traditionally swam in their undergarments, and for the Japanese, that meant the fundoshi, which is a cross between a loincloth and a g-string. In short, this may have been as close as historical man got to the modern Speedo!

Next Page! Mark Tewksbury has nothing to hide!