Boys in shorts 1 -- speedos vs. formal shorts.

In a fascinating post now deeply buried in a thread down the board, Silent_Insanity made a number of observations which simply CRY OUT for response. Rather than trying to answer everything at once, I'm going to break up S.I's post and start new threads on this ever-important topic. So here goes number one. QUOTE Let us go back to the statement of preferring boys in shorts over speedos, yet strongly wanting to make sure they are very short shorts thought real quick. What on earth is the logic of that? Why would 2 inches of fabric make such a difference to me in sexual appeal? Speedos show more of the boy! And really short shorts would not cover much else either. Well, I think there is some advanced psychological explanation there, probably beyond my knowledge. After nearly 20 years of trying to process it, I think it is the idea that shorts are an outer dress, a "final" dress. When the outer clothes are revealing, you are stuck being exposed. A speedo, or swimming shorts is not short of being attractive; they certainly have their own appeal. Howwwever, this is a casual setting and it is about convenience for swimming, technically being more like an underwear. Casual shorts, are similar, relaxed and the mentality is "I just threw these on. They are easy", like this boy written into the early Pokemon days: "I Like To Wear Shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear" https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-shorts-theyre-comfy-and-easy-to-wear) This does not mean I do not enjoy seeing casually dressed boys though! Moving to a particular preference, when a boy is dressed up in fancy clothes, a specific, well-fitted and designed uniform that includes shorts that are nice and trim, obviously short, this is on purpose. It is obviously by design. In this case, it is not something the boy just threw on. Every day he is waking up having to pull up those shorts, every single day. He is "stuck" in them, per se. He pulls up those shorts, which keep getting shorter and shorter as they make their way up to his hips, he puts on his socks, gets his shoes on, and there is no wiggling out of it. In this case, he cannot pull the inseams down his thighs like boys do with longer shorts (when boys in longer shorts play, constantly pulling the inseams down like they did when I was growing up). They just have to be used to their thighs always being on display. And interestingly enough, these uniforms were planned. This is where I think the appeal starts to sharpen for me, trying to process how this happened in SO MANY DIFFERENT CULTURES around the world! This UNSPOKEN agreement, so many people had about boys wearing shorts. Japan, UK, South Africa, Germany, Ukraine, USA, Australia, all over the globe. They come in versions of jean shorts, as lederhosen (and leather variants), corduroy, cotton, each culture having a slight twist to it but the principle being the same - boys traditionally wearing short shorts. UNQUOTE Okay. Why does a properly dressed boy (like the one in S.I.'s siggy) give an erotic thrill that transcends a boy in speedos? Obviously, any healthy red-blooded male enjoys the sight of boys' bodies and speedos show more body than does the uniform in S.I.'s siggy. Two responses here. First, speedoes are unnecessary (at least for boys) and exist only because of body shame. Boys should swim naked -- and they did until quite recently. If you go back a century, when boys wanted to swim, they simply took their clothes off and swam. That was true, indeed, of many older males too. Pools were sex-segregated (nudity was required in most of them) and some beaches employed gender segregation so that males could get naked without fearing the female gaze. Even in non-segregated areas, younger boys typically stripped off. Wearing anything when swimming or bathing is stupid and undermines the purpose. Speedos are a concession to body shame and the regrettable integration of swimming areas. Alas, with the terrorization of boys and the inculcation of body shame, boys began to reject even speedos -- why we got these horrible knee-length trunks. Second, a requirement that boys dress in ways that reveal and flatter their bodies can produce an erotic response both in the boy and the observer precisely because the boy must confront the reality of his own beauty and desirability (this is of course a truism for the ways women and girls dress.) Speedos are worn because custom forces you to cover your genitals. But proper uniformed or otherwise dressy shorts are worn to display and flatter the boy's body. Of course shorts can be -- and are -- worn for comfort. It's the most common reason for wearing them, as S.I. points out with his famous Pokemon example. Freedom of movement -- not to mention keeping cool in warm weather -- are the most commonly cited reasons why so many boys like to wear shorts (and are gradually returning to the custom as the fear of being thought "gay" diminishes -- see my post below https://secure.boychat.org/messages/1548546.htm) But what S.I. and I are talking about here is something slightly different -- requiring/encouraging boys to wear shorts not simply for comfort but because they look so good -- to the point where boys must wear shorts even in cold weather. It's worth looking at a little history here. As S.I. points out, the custom of putting boys in shorts arose globally at a specific point in time. They were not originally boys's clothes. In 18th century Europe, upper class men wore breeches that came to just below the knee together with knee-length stockings. Lower class men and boys of all classes simply wore long trousers (although in warmer weather, the trousers only came to mid-calf). After the French Revolution, upper class male breeches disappeared. All males wore long trousers all the time (although again trousers for boys and lower class men in casual settings in hot weather would sometimes only extend to mid-calf.) Later in the 19th century, upper class boys began being put into knee-length breeches again, but worn with stockings -- so no bare leg. Meanwhile, the Brits had assembled a global empire -- much of it in hot places. Regular soldiers began to rebel against their hot, stifling uniforms and started to hack off the trousers. The officer class, bowing to the inevitable, proceeded to make it formal -- introducing "short" trousers that came to just above the knee, worn with knee-length socks. This became the standard tropical country uniform for British soldiers -- and was soon adopted by the other European imperialist powers as well (e.g., the French). That look migrated to boys thanks to Lord Baden-Powell (blessed be his memory) who had fought in the Boer War and subsequently founded the Boy Scouts -- complete with a modified uniform of the British soldier in South Africa. The look spread like wildfire thanks to two factors: 1) boys were imitating men whom they admired (British explorers; soldiers). 2) Britain's global prestige was at its height so other countries also began dressing their boys in the fashion. By the 1920s, boys throughout Europe and Asia were wearing shorts both for dress-up and for casual wear. By the 1930s, it became almost impossible even to find long pants for boys below 14 in southern Europe -- (because of the cold, boys in Scandinavia and Russia wore longs in winter.) (Interestingly, the US was an exception and for similar reasons. American boys hero-worshipped cowboys not British explorers. The garment of choice for cowboys was of course levis -- invented by a Bavarian immigrant to California looking for something similar to lederhosen, in a place where leather was too expensive to be practical. And because a cowboy spent his days on a horse, the levis had to be long. Jeans would end up doing for Americans boys what shorts did for European -- and when the US replaced Britain as the world's superpower, many boys worldwide abandoned shorts for jeans. Meanwhile, shorts in the US were associated until the 1960s with prissy, upper-class Europeanized ways.) As the century proceeded, a subtle shift began to appear. Shorts went from being something that boys wanted to wear for reasons of comfort and hero-imitation to being simply ubiquitous for boys to being required as longs again began to appear (partly with the growing prestige of American pop culture; the coming of jeans). Shorts became shorter -- and dressier. (The film "Le Petit Nicholas" which kick-started this thread is a good look at mid-20th century boy fashion -- short, flattering shorts ubiquitous but not universal.) Peds in those days were firmly in charge of many schools and loved seeing boys in shorts so they (we) were not going to bend uniform requirements. But even in non-uniformed situations, boys began to have to choose -- and the act of dressing up in very short, nicely styled shorts -- often paired with knee socks that would show off the boy's thighs -- and formal top -- sweater; necktie, jacket -- inevitably forced recognition on the part of the boy that his body was attractive; desirable. Some boys rebelled against that; some reveled in it -- but there was -- let's be honest -- an inevitable erotic undertone either way to choosing (or being required) to display one's thighs. Will move on to some of the other issues S.I. raised in subsequent posts. SR (Boychat.org link) Let's discuss boys and shorts!