John Roughan: Time to rekindle a brief affair

'Speedos' are an iconic New Zealand swimwear, despite the male preference for board shorts. Photo / Kenny Rodger

The response to a summer poll this week implied this is not the time to ask whether we should replace the Queen, redesign the flag or nominate someone to be the next Governor-General. The more urgent question is, what should we be wearing at the beach?

The Herald polled that one too and the result published on Wednesday was another severe setback for an innocent little garment I grew up with.

When men were asked whether they preferred wearing "Speedos" or "boardies", 70.4 per cent went for boardies and just 13.9 for the briefs.

I wonder how many of the 70 per cent have ever worn anything else. It is now 40 years since decency dictated that we wear shorts in the water.

Actually it started as a fashion as I recall, and as usual in matters of fashion I was slow and reluctant to comply. I hated the clammy drag of loose fabric in the sea.

Board shorts had arrived with surfing sometime in the 1960s and looked good, I had to admit, when the wearer was standing on water. But those of us decently immersed had no use for them.

Yet by 1970 or soon after, boardies had taken over the beach. The hedonism of the sixties was giving way to the new moralisms of the seventies: feminism, environmentalism, political correctness.

I succumbed and patiently awaited the day the tide would turn. Ten years went by, then 20.

But far from returning, our old tight togs came to be remembered as obscene. I don't recall anyone regarding them so during the years we wore them. We didn't call them "Speedos" either. That is a brand that came quite late in the day and they were low, light and loose enough to be offensive on the loins of exhibitionists.

The pendulum as usual had swung too far and with shorts it swung too far back. But it took a long time for tight togs of a more modest cut to creep tentatively back on the market.

Older and braver men than me got back into them. They are wearing them still, supremely indifferent to what anyone may be thinking of them.

They are swimming as they did in their youth and they see no reason to be more encumbered in the water now. They have my complete respect.

Last summer an Australian writer who went swimming in Speedos again described the sensation as one of feeling the first time that he was fully in his own skin.

He is so right. I had taken the plunge some years earlier in Hawaii. It was a long way from anybody who might recognise me and I'd been toying with the inclination for a while.

I went to the nearest boardie shop and asked if they stocked Speedos, since that is what they are called these days. The youth behind the counter pursed his lips in barely suppressed amusement. He said nothing and disappeared momentarily. When he returned he underhanded them across the counter so furtively and wordlessly that they might have been contraband.

They were probably a visual cruelty to Waikiki but in the water they were worth it. Your limbs feel 10m long, you can flex like a fish.

It was wonderful to feel again the agility and sensuality of swimming. It is simply not there in shorts and I suspect every honest man would agree with me.

Back here though, the togs that fit like a skin have rarely had a swim. Every time it seems the world might cope with them again they receive a setback.

That Australian piece last summer was prompted I think by the Liberal Party's choice of a new leader, Tony Abbott, who was once photographed in Speedos at a beach. The photo was endlessly reprinted and during last year's election campaign newspaper cartoonists always drew the Opposition leader in budgie smugglers.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Abbott hadn't looked like a lad who fancied himself in daks.

Old men can get away with it because they know they don't look very good and they don't care. They are going for a swim and they are damned if they are going to be unduly encumbered in the water for the sake of appearances. For young it is all about appearances. This week's summer poll report was accompanied by telling comment from a beach.

A 29-year-old said, Speedos were "not cool". A 49-year-old said, "I wouldn't go out in public wearing my underpants, would you?"

A woman said, "Speedos - even if you have a really nice body it looks like you are trying too hard, and if you don't have a nice body it looks just awful."

Looks are not the point. The older you get the less you care. I'm not quite there yet.