Death to Speedos

By Candace Derickx

And so it happened. On a recent trip south with my girls, they noticed. They are eight and ten now after all, so naturally they are beginning to note that men and women wear wildly different attire to swim in. Some wear bikinis, some wear one pieces, some wear swim trunks and some, well some wear Speedos.

And it was the Speedos that were causing them to stare, mouths agape, horrified looks in their eyes.

So, I leaned over to them at the pool and said, “You know what those are called, right?”

Eyes wide, leaning forward they were rapt. I could see them anticipating some very adult, clinical explanation that I felt they were finally mature enough to handle.

“Banana hammocks.”

They reeled with laughter. You see, even their mother doesn’t have the maturity to deal with Speedos.

I told them flat out what I thought. That I think they’re hideous….but that we must be accepting of them, as not everyone, as they could clearly see, hated them. That it was a very European thing to wear among men and indeed, we were surrounded by European men. European men that were a little long in the tooth to be sporting next to nothing, and had a little too much hair peeking out from the top of their barely there swimsuit. Men with bellies so large that they couldn’t tell you with certainty if they were dressed or not below their belly button. Men, who in all honesty, thought they were Golden Adonis’. And to be fair, there were a few delusional North Americans thrown in there for good measure as well.

I thought to myself — “Self, what women allows her husband to go out like this? What woman can control the laughter when her husband walks out in one of these? What woman is turned on by the sight of this? Self, why is their not a license to buy one of these? Excuse me Sir, I’ll need to see your Olympic medal before you can purchase this dingaling sling.”

Surely, I couldn’t be the only one thinking these incredibly immature thoughts. Surely, there must be others. So I hit my Facebook page and asked the question:

And I felt vindicated. Yes! If I could just find a way to organize us, I really thing we could get these grape smugglers banned. Who’s with me?

Watch for my next post: Ladies – Dental Floss Up Your Butt. 9 out of 10 dentists agree that’s not where it’s supposed to go.