Bathing suits at camp

[msnowman]

Our council Scout Reservation plays host to both Cub Resident Camp & Boy Scout Resident camp (which includes co-ed groups from Canada as well as local Ships & Crews). For swimming they "strongly recommend" that all women and girls wear 1 piece bathing suits. Fair enough, a youth camp of any sort is not the time or place for revealing bikini type swim wear. However, there is no corresponding "recommendation" for men against wearing the Speedo bikini bottom type swimwear.

 

I may be old fashion but I feel men in bikini bottoms are as inappropriate at a youth camp as women in bikinis. No youth should have to be faced w/ an adult man's.....bunchiness at camp. Am I the only one this practice bothers? I think if women are asked to wear one piece swimsuits for modesty reasons, men should be asked to wear trunks.

 

Does your camp have swimsuit standards? If so, do they have the same standard for both genders?

 

Thank you for letting me vent...this has bothered me for 3 years....lol

 

YiS

Michelle

[gwd-scouter]

Michelle,

 

Bunchiness??? That has had me laughing I can barely type a response! Love it and will remember that term everytime I see someone in a speedo.

 

I don't know if our council camp has any specific rules about it, but females always wear one piece suits and have never seen a male in a speedo bikini type suit.

 

Bunchiness...ha ha ha...I just love that.

[nldscout]

Unlike a public beach, I think most self respecting male Scouters wouldn't be caught dead in a speedo, atleast none that I know. If you wore one to our camp, I think it would be mentioned, and mentioned, and mentioned for quite sometime.

 

It appears the female swimsuit rule is an old carry over as its been in the rules for as far back as I can recall.

[OldGreyEagle]

What with they can do with spandex, lycra, etc. its amazing what can be shown with a one piece, so I am not sure the two piecer ban is of any relevance...

 

Have a scouter in the troop who was quite the swimmer in college so I have been told and still fancies himself quite the man. He always wears speedos, although at this point his belly drops over the top and obscures whatever bunchiness there might be...

 

Then again, in the Pocono Mountains where the camp is located, shrinkage tends to be more of an issue than bunchiness...

[Eamonn]

We were at our local pool a week or so back with the Sea Scouts.

A couple of the female Scouts did have on bikini type swim wear.

I did make a note to myself that I need to find a nice way of talking to them about this.

The boys all had very baggy swim suits.

I have it on very good authority that I have very sexy knees.

To date no one has ever made mention of any bunchiness .

Could it be that I'm bunchiness challenged?

But at the ripe old age of 50, I'm more worried about paunchiness!!

Eamonn.

[CA_Scouter]

Ooooh, grown men in speedos... that's an image I could do without.

 

ms - have you seen this or is this just a 'what if' question? I too have never seen a scouter in a speedo and don't really ever expect to ( or want to ).

 

If anything, your camp should take the mention of gender out of the swimsuit requirement. Seems there's a loophole there that would permit men to wear bikinis!

 

 

[EagleInKY]

I'm pretty sure our camp has a rule against bikinis and speedos.

[Herms]

Speedos?! Where would you sew a mile swim patch?! lol

[scoutingagain]

Across the part that covers the "bunchiness".

 

Seriously,

 

I'm pretty sure the natural modesty of most adolescent boys would keep them from wearing Speedo style swim shorts. I've never noticed them at our camp, or any camp I've visited. Not that I'm looking for them! However, since I now know bikinis are forbidden apparel, I will keep an eye out for them and have the offender turned over to the waterfront uniform police to have the offending item removed...er replaced.

 

SA

[msnowman]

Thanks for the lively input.

To answer a previously asked question - yes, I have seen this at camp, so its not just hypothetical....Nephew asked (in the loud voice every 9 year old asks everything) "Why is he swimming in his underwear?".

 

I don't mind the no bikini rule for women. I just wish they'd extend it to the men. (Bunchiness, shrinkage, paunch and all )

 

YiS

Michelle

[SR540Beaver]

I'm pretty sure that one of the exclusions we have for adult registration takes care of the speedo problem.

[bluegoose]

Having worked at the camp waterfront for a few too many years, I saw a few speedos. They were usually worn by adult leader, but occasionally a scout would wear one. Those scouts tended to be competitive swimmers who were used to them, but some weren't (as a former competitive swimmer, I would occasionally wear one, so it's hard for me to criticize them for it). To be honest, we had more of a problem with boys wearing baggy suits that would fall off. In fact the last time I perused a swimming merit badge pamphlet, all the diagrams featured boys wearing speedos.

 

Although my camp does not have a rule on female or male swimsuits (and I don't want to make one) I'd rather it require speedos for several reasons:

1. Less drag, which would probably help a few scouts complete their swim test or 150 yard swim (swimming mb) or 400 yard swim (lifesaving mb/bsa lifeguard).

2. Swimsuits wouldn't fall off, creating a much more immodest situation.

3. Most scouts would remove their swimsuit once they finish swimming, preventing the all too common rash I saw as health officer.

4. Form-fitting (tight, constrictive, revealing, bunchy, other appropriate adjective) trunks do exist, and are more prevalent at my camp than speedos are.

 

Just a few thoughts from the wilds of Wisconsin.

(This message has been edited by bluegoose)

[EagleInKY]

Hope this doesn't offend, it certainly isn't meant to...

 

At Webelos Resident Camp a few years ago there was a very attractive mom who showed up for swimmer's test in a bikini. She was informed of the one-piece rule (much to the chagrin of some of the male scouters present). Of course, the joke with her through the rest of camp was a twist on the old joke about the European woman who showed up at an American swimming pool in a bikini and was told that only one piece suits were allowed. Her response was "Which piece?"....

 

[SWScouter]

A good chunk of my youth was spent at a pool. I was on a summer swim team and I dove all year round. I would either be wearing a speedo or a special suit for diving (not quite as brief as a speedo, but elastic and tight like a girdle for more support). At the time, speedo's were made of nylon; this was before lycra. Though I don't remember, I can't imagine I swam at camp in anything but a speedo. This was in the early 70's. One thing to keep in mind is that regular swim suits at the time were probably smaller and tighter than the boxers boys wear today.

 

I swam on a Masters swim team a few years ago. All the men, including those with a gut, wore the lycra racing suits. So did the ladies.

 

I've also spent a good chunk of my adult life cycling competitively and wear the tight lycra cycling shorts and the skin-suits (one piece short/shirt) riding. One wears the cycling shorts like swim suits, nothing on underneath, so perhaps I just don't worry too much about it. If I did, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the activities I love to do.

 

Maybe I'm more pragmatic about things, but I would have thought the one-piece suit rule has to do with practicality and not modesty. A woman can jump, splash, and play around a lot more easily without accident of exposure in a one piece than in a bikini.

 

Bluegoose makes a lot of good points about the advantages of speedos. One other is that they are easier to wear underneath one's pants or shorts. Also, they dry much quicker so it is easy enough to just wait a couple minutes and put your pants back on when you're done swimming. Think how much easier it would be if your troop wore speedos under there uniform pants when they checked into summer camp and went for the swim test.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is that the really skimpy lycra suits probably are just those teeny little euro suits that swimmers don't wear.

 

All that being said, I haven't worn a speedo for six years or so.

 

You know what's really funny is right now the ads on the right are advertising TYR swim wear (Speedo competitor), Mastectomy swim wear and swim wear for large people. I just gotta laugh.

 

SWScouter

[CalicoPenn]

Unwritten rule of speedo wearing - No speedo wearing if over 25 (or European).

 

I grew up wearing speedos about 7 months out of the year (competitive swimming - summer league, winter league then high school). I thought nothing about wearing them at summer camp - I was used to them. I did wear a pair of "lifeguard" shorts (think Baywatch - not baggie, not board shorts - more like nylon gym shorts) over them when I wasn't swimming, not out of modesty but because it kept the suit from getting damaged sitting on concrete pool decks or sand (official reason from the coaches) and because everyone else on the team wore them too (non-pressurized peer pressure - no one told us to wear them (other than the coaches), we just did because others did).

 

Even at 14+ (when "bunchiness" begins to be an issue), I wore them, as did most of the other competitive swimmers in the troop (and there were quite a few of us on the same team).

 

I learned a little trick from the waterfront counselors during my CIT rotation at the waterfront. When they did the check in swim, they would have the kids wearing the speedos go first - most of the kids wearing speedos turned out to be competitive swimmers so they were confident that the kids would pass - the older kids (13 up) would be handed a pole at the end of their swim test to serve as an extra pair of eyes and hands during the rest of the units swim test. It was one of those waterfront staff truisms (borne out by observation, not statistics) that the kids wearing the baggy shorts weren't very good swimmers. Of course, this was the late 1970's, times change, and its likely not true.

 

Interesting thing about the whole modesty issue - I never had a problem being around anyone - boy, girl, cheerleader, wrestling/football jock, male, female, friends mother/father or even grandparents (you get the idea) wearing nothing but my speedo but I'd be darned if someone would see me wearing just my tighty whities (which had a heck of a lot more fabric than the speedos which left little to the imagination) - go figure.

 

As for the mile swim patch - never on a speedo - it goes on the shorts one wears while sitting on the beach - though the one year I earned 14 of them in a 2-week summer camp session, I could have made a bikini-style swimsuit with the patches (I didn't ask my unit to buy me 14 - I didn't even ask them to buy me 1 - I already had a few from previous years - my red vest would have looked rather funny with nothing but mile swim patches on it).

 

CalicoPenn