Shorts Attention Span

Here in the world swimwear capital, it seems a man could find any style of trunk imaginable. Even if he hasn’t exercised since George Bush was president.

But would it flatten his gut? Slim his hips? Make his thighs appear tree trunk-like? Beef up the caboose area? Would he care?

Maybe you don’t hear the same disappointed sighs of disgust and muffled whimpering from males that one catches drifting from women’s dressing rooms. But some men do suffer swimsuit angst.

Yes, men care some about how they look, retailers and designers say, but society doesn’t expect them to care as much as women care. And, unlike women, men don’t discuss it.

Just listen to what was not said as men bought swimwear at the mall and at coastal shops recently.

“I need a size medium,” says the middle-aged man at a store at MainPlace/Santa Ana. “Do you have it in this rust color?”

The sales “associate” offers to check in back and finds the trunks. He asks the man--who resembles an aging lifeguard with what appears to be a 36-inch waist and a 20-pound fanny pack of flesh spilling over his belt--would he like to try the trunks on? The man shoots a “what a dim bulb you are” look and shakes his head.

In five minutes, the guy has bought a swimsuit. It all seemed so painless, so devoid of suffering.

Oh, all right, so they go to war. Men do not agonize over “full coverage” on their swimsuit bottoms or whether they are tight enough to slim but loose enough to allow circulation.

But men point out that they do not have the choices women do with swimsuits. While it may be disheartening for a woman to switch from a two-piece to a one-piece--or, yikes, a skirted suit--women at least have a choice.

“You have it easy,” says Hatley Mason, a Times graphic artist bemoaning his few extra pounds. “If you’re wearing a bikini, that’s one thing, but you have the option to wear a one-piece suit. We are completely exposed from the waist up,” he says, patting his stomach.

And though they may not spend hours talking about it, some men interviewed say they are mindful of looking as trim as possible.

“Guys like me? I always go for the elastic waist,” says Jay Lafayette, 18, who just graduated from Loara High School in Anaheim, the school, he adds, “where the ‘No Doubt’ girl came from.”

As he helps customers to dressing rooms at Beyond the Beach in Santa Ana, the salesman fingers the five silver chokers around his neck, which match his nose ring, and admits that he is a tad overweight.

He did buy a pair of board shorts, a look popularized by the buff Southern California surfer.

“But I just bought mine a little looser, so they’re more comfortable.”

And he also bought them in steel blue--with vertical stripes--an old trick most women have long been on to, although some designers say you don’t want to overdo the vertical stripe.

“Instead of slimming, you look like a vertical tent,” says Mr. Blackwell, the fashion designer whose trademark is the annual Top 10 Worst Dressed List.

To help the average male shop, we tried eavesdropping outside dressing rooms for tips. But that went nowhere. So we asked merchants, designers and men at the beach what they look for in a suit and which styles most flatter various physiques.

About the only consensus is that none dare don the unforgiving Speedo unless one is a competitive swimmer or has a nearly flawless shape.

“If I was 30 pounds overweight and had to wear a Speedo,” says one fortysomething professional who surfs, “now that would be some major angst. I’d be better off wearing drapes, or a muumuu wetsuit.”

*

At ground zero for surfwear, Huntington Surf and Sport, not a single male utters a word exiting the dressing rooms--except “I’ll take this one.” Usually he has taken in all of two swimsuits to try on. Two, a woman is thinking, what a joke!

The premier male swimsuit in these parts is the board short, which has a lace-up closure, fitted waist and rear and is fuller in the leg, which is knee-length.

It dominates the coastal market in swimwear, say the Surf and Sport sales staffers, who must love a job where every workday they get to wear baggy T-shirt, drop-butt shorts and flip-flops.

Does anyone ask them for the most flattering trunk?

“Not at all,” says Jasen Nielsen, 21. “We carry 40, 42, 44s [waist sizes], but we have like one of each, maybe.” He says no matter what size they are bought in, men are buying darker or neutral colors with reflective strips.

Stussy, Counter Culture, Gotcha, Split, Rusty, Katin, Billabong, Quiksilver and other Orange County-based swimwear companies--or the surfers who wear them--cut the edge on swimwear trends globally.

Board-short makers say they give little attention to flattering a certain body type.

Paul Mittleman, a designer for Irvine-based Stussy, says longer and baggier legs are what hard-core surfers wear now.

“I’ve been at sales meetings, where my trunks have been sold,” says Mittleman, 29, “and it’s never, ‘Well, do they fit well?’ It’s all appearance, not fit. We may have 10 issues; that’s not even 20th. . . . [Whether] it’s tie trunks, tie waist or snaps? Is it three ties, or two? Those are real issues.”

Mike Schillmoeller, co-owner of Irvine-based Counter Culture, says utility dictates style.

“Because our brand is definitely aimed at a younger market, our target market is 12 to 30. With that in mind, it’s not like we go, ‘Hey, you know what? We’ve got to be real concerned with this size or that size,’ ” Schillmoeller says. “We don’t go into it that way. We think of A, function, and B, color. It’s not like, ‘Hey, lets make this guy look good.’ ”

The elastic-waist trunk generally does not require much dressing room time, shoppers point out. The waist is the defining size, and even that is expandable. Such suits often are lightweight nylon with liners.

“Men [age] 30 and above tend to wear them; they’re more conservative,” Lafayette says. “Board shorts, I guess you’d say are a little more temperamental. You really gotta try those on.”

A mother-son shopping team in the store opts for the looser-fit trunk, on sale for $9.99.

“The reason we’re buying these today are the prices,” says Nancy Gonzalez, 38, of Santa Ana, accompanied by her 13-year-old son, David. “They have the same quality and workmanship as others like them.”

Would David try on his trunks? Pshaw!

Over at Macy’s, Mercedeh Attari says the most flattering cut of waistband for a man with a poochy tummy “is to wear a flat front.” She refers to a Tommy Hilfiger swim trunk with a flat front and a short panel of elastic at the back.

“But I’d say something not too tight and fitted.”

Rick Shuster, manager of the Speedo Authentic Fitness shop in MainPlace/Santa Ana, says the traditional competition suit, which is what people typically call a Speedo, is ideally worn by the pool athlete or “catalog model guy.”

But Speedos are the standard swimsuit in Europe and are popular in Australia.

“It’s their typical ‘cossie’ in Australia,” he says. “It’s short for costume, which is what they call them.”

Square-cut retro looks from the 1950s are very hot this summer for men and women, but he cautions that the wearer has “to have little or no middle section. They are not forgiving.”

The standard Speedo has 3-inch sides, but the bikini style is a mere inch. Most American Speedo customers are water polo players and swimmers, and opt for the standard. Also, Shuster says, “little kids want them. Twenty-two-inch waists. You should see them, they look like they should go on key chains.”

Some surfers wear Speedos beneath their wetsuits, or even their board shorts, which are not lined.

A challenge with selling Speedos is that a customer usually wears a size larger than his pant size. This is where ego emerges and there is no difference in how the genders react.

“Men say, ‘What do you mean I have to go up a size?’ It’s especially common with very fit people,” Shuster says.

Most mainstream retailers interviewed said the average male customer is replacing an old pair of swim trunks, wants the same thing and probably in navy or black. Those are the most popular colors for men, who seek to avoid attracting attention; women like those colors too, but because they slenderize.

“If [swim trunks] are high mid-thigh, not real baggy, have an elastic waist in a solid color,” Shuster says, “they will look OK. They have net pockets so there is not that billowing affect on the sides once worn in the water.

Any unusual requests?

Leopard-print thongs, Shuster says, but they are available only in the chain’s Laguna Beach store.

Is there a Speedo horror story to share?

He strides into a stockroom and returns with perhaps the largest pair of Speedos on the planet. They are blue with a marbled pattern. Waist size 44. A European man of large stock insisted on seeing them. As an apparent humanitarian gesture, Shuster urged against the purchase. The customer, however, rejected the hefty Speedos for a less obvious reason: he felt the suit unduly chaste.

Holding them up, Shuster does not seem to be joking when he observes: “They do look like a Depend undergarment.”

*

On the sands of Huntington City Beach, the whole spectrum of male swimwear is on display.

There is 14-year-old brace-face Larry of Detroit, who cannot be bothered to give his last name. He sports black nylon Adidas trunks for the water polo camp he is attending with friends.

“They’re durable,” he says after renting a bodyboard at Vic’s at the Beach. “I paid $3 for them at Kmart.” He pushes up his mirror sunglasses and, with a hand-across-his-neck gesture, signals the conversation’s end.

Wearing knee-length Levi’s shorts and black Doc Marten lace-up boots, bare-chested Vince Gervasi of Whittier is strolling the asphalt boardwalk with two other friends in boots and tattoos.

Asked if he chooses a swimsuit to serve his body shape, Gervasi grabs a pinch of belly skin and jokes, “Oh, thanks a lot.” But he doesn’t wear swim trunks, he says, “because I don’t go into the water.” He is strictly here on babe-watch.

Sidekick Tim Bartlett, 26, is wearing a chain off a friend’s motorcycle connecting his belt loop with his wallet, Dickie shorts and the look-alike boots of his friends. His ears and nose are pierced, his arms and legs tattooed with a demonic angel, skulls and German expressions.

“Oh my God,” he says when asked about the last time he bought a bathing suit, “when I was 19. I swim [now] in cutoff underwear.”

Under the spray of a beach shower, Richard Richmon, 57, of Huntington Beach washes off the salty ocean from his tanned skin and trunks. He wears modified board shorts.

“I hate them. Board shorts. If I wanted to wear ‘em long, I’d buy pants. So I bought them and had ‘em shortened. Took them to my dry cleaners. I guess I’m from the old school,” Richmon adds. “Go down just past Jack’s [snack bar], and the Europeans from the Waterfront Hilton have a different attitude. They all wear Speedos. Only the U.S. has such a prudish attitude.”

*

Three little boys scurry along the boardwalk near the snack bar, now and then their sandy toes curling up and away from the hot pavement.

They have peeled away from a sea of red. They are with the summer Junior Lifeguards program. “We all wear red trunks,” says Ryan Goldstein, 11.

Matt Fabre, also 11 and from Huntington Beach, said being in the all-day summer program and wearing the official color of lifeguards everywhere is “cool, pretty much.” He stands with his arms crossed against his chest and uses the word “occasionally” at least twice during the conversation.

Junior lifeguards, pipes in Alex Bailey, fair and freckled in his red trunks, “makes you feel important, kind of.”

The boys all wear Speedos beneath their trunks, Ryan says, “because, hey, a big wave could break.” Then it would be adios, swimsuit.

But Phyllis Bailey later says that she thinks son Ryan and boys his age wear a swimsuit beneath a swimsuit because the older teens, like her 16-year-old son, do. But they wear Speedos under board shorts.

“I’ve seen it for the past three or four years now,” she says.

All three boys agreed they would get board shorts if they were buying swimsuits for something besides the lifeguard program.

Down the beach a stretch, Jane and Gill Snyder of San Bernardino are sharing a large sheet and a picnic. His swim trunks are at least 10 years old, he says. His wife bought them. Even then, he inherited them after one of their three sons deemed them rejects.

“They don’t change much in style,” says the retiree from the financial world.

“We have three boys,” says Jane Snyder, “and if I don’t buy them, they would wear [street] shorts and not care.”

From behind the wood counter at Jack’s, longtime owner Doug Clapp sells beach paraphernalia that includes $15 swimsuits, from small to large. They are basic--cotton print shorts with elastic waist and pockets.

“These trunks are for people who forgot their trunks and don’t want to cut off their Levi’s,” he explains. “They are pretty basic. But sometimes I want to be the bathing suit police, write tickets to people who shouldn’t be wearing them.”

When Getting Fit Gives You Fits

Advice for the physique-challenged male shopping for a flattering swimsuit: Be honest about your dimensions. Designer Mr. Blackwell offers other tips.

Challenge: Full waist

Do’s:

* Wear an elastic waistband or a flat front with elastic at the back of the waistband. It’s best if the elastic starts at the back of the hip.

* Legs can be slightly loose, but avoid excessive leg width.

* Try a three-color suit: one color in a panel at the front (off-centered is OK), another color around it, and a third darker vertical color that starts at the front of the hip and ends at the back of the hip. This minimizes that area and draws the eye along the color lines (rather than along your lines).

Don’ts:

* No skin-hugging fabrics.

* No horizontal stripes, especially at the waist.

* No prints, especially large ones.

Challenge: Thin build

Do’s:

* Try a large pattern; the eye focuses on the pattern instead of on your build.

* Wear bright colors; you can pull it off.

* Wear a slightly loose and long leg, but don’t overwhelm your proportions with excessive bagginess.

* Round out your body with a round, circular pattern, but circles should vary in size (as opposed to polka-dots).

Don’ts:

* No short, wide legs; they will make you look like a stick figure.

* No spandex or clinging fabrics.

Challenge: Short

Do’s:

* Remember scale.

Don’ts:

* No long trunk legs.

Challenge: Heavy chest

Do’s:

* Consider a short-sleeved shirt, unbuttoned.

Don’ts

* No tight tank tops.