When It Comes to Swim Trunks the Size of a Hotel Mint, Maybe Opt Out

The New York Times article, titled “Skimpy Men’s Swimming Briefs Are Making a Splash,” offers a solemn dispatch from the front lines of GLP-1 drugs, but I would guess that men—having exhausted every form of visible self-optimization—are now expressing their Ozempic-enabled slenderness via tiny, Lycra-clad declarations of status. We’re talking male bikinis, or what I like to call the ego sling.

Apparently, if you’re dropping $18,000 a year to chemically suppress your appetite and shed your humanity one subcutaneous injection at a time, you deserve the privilege of looking like a Bond villain’s pool boy. I suppose this is the endgame: pay to waste away, then wrap what’s left in a luxury logoed banana peel.

Luxury underwear companies, never ones to miss a chance to monetize body dysmorphia, are now marketing these second-skin briefs not as mere swimwear, but as power statements. To wear them is to say: “I’ve defeated fat, joy, modesty, and comfort in one fell swoop.”

I’m almost 64. My aspirations remain high—ideally, I’d like to look like a special-ops operator on vacation in Sardinia. But I know my place. I wear boxer-style swim trunks, the cloth of the pragmatic and the semi-dignified. They’re not exciting, but neither is seeing a sun-leathered septuagenarian adjust a spandex slingshot over a suspicious tan line.

There’s a difference between being aspirational and being delusional. The former means striving for vitality, strength, and energy. The latter means stuffing yourself into a satirical undergarment and pretending you’re a twenty-two-year-old wide receiver with a sponsorship deal.

To my fellow older men: sculpt your body like it’s your spiritual obligation—but when it comes to swim briefs the size of a hotel mint, maybe opt out. Not every part of youth is worth reliving. Some of it deserves to be left in the chlorine-stained past, right next to Axe body spray and Ed Hardy tank tops.