With Holden Commodore key rings largely lost to the past, symbols of Australian manhood don’t come smaller than swimming trunks. Our love for briefer-is-better styles can be found in celebrated artworks such as Charles Meere’s 1940 painting, Australian Beach Pattern; in cinema, from Colin Friels in Coolangatta Gold to Jude Law in The New Pope; and poolside at the country’s most memorable sporting triumphs.

Yet somehow the tiny attire manages to provoke oversized outrage, from the prudish or homophobic to just plain American.

The rise in popularity of labels such as Budgy Smugglers, aussieBum and Sluggers, along with the enduring success of Speedo, has kept brief styles in the faces of Australian beachgoers, but their presence remains as contentious as their cultural debut.

So, where did they come from? How did they become so big in Australia? And what does their future hold?

What do we call them?

Depending on whether you grew up swimming at Manly, Burleigh or Gunnamatta, you might call them sluggos, budgie smugglers, dick stickers, DTs, DPs, banana hammocks or lollybags – but most people will understand that they need to brace for an eyeful when you tell them that you’re donning Speedos.

Following the success of a racer-back swimsuit produced for Swedish champion Arne Borg at the 1927 European Championships, Scots immigrant Alexander MacRae named the swimwear division of his underwear company Speedo in 1928. The name Speedo emerged from a staff competition at the company headquarters in Sydney’s Newtown, where Captain Jim Parsons composed the slogan “Speed on in your Speedos”.

By 1929, Speedo racer-back swimsuits were produced for the public and the company became associated with developments in swimwear, particularly for the Olympics.

The journey towards a briefer Speedo style was well under way by the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, at which Australians including Murray Rose wore fast-drying nylon styles. Rose’s Speedos from the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games were put up for auction at Leonard Joel in Melbourne in 2017 by his widow, Jodi. The 1956 swimsuit did not sell, but the 1960 Speedo, featuring the Olympic rings within an Australian flag, fetched $1220.

In 1959, artist Peter Travis tapped into increasingly relaxed mores by creating a swimsuit for Speedo to be worn on the hips. “The hips are stable. It isn’t like tying something around the stomach,” Travis said in 2008.

Reducing the amount of fabric on the side was a matter of dynamics. “If you lift your leg up at right angles, that is the shape of the way it is cut.”

Were budgies really scandalous?

Once it became available for sale in 1961, Travis’ Speedo design quickly attracted the attention of Bondi Beach inspector Aub Laidlaw. Laidlaw had a reputation for carrying a tape measure to assess the modesty of women’s bikinis; if they failed to measure up, the women would be asked to leave the beach. Upon sighting the new Speedo design, Laidlaw summoned the police, who arrested the wearers for indecent exposure.

Charges were dismissed, however, as the garments did not display pubic hair, thus protecting the decency of Bondi – and pushing sales upwards.

For the Maritime Museum assistant curator Inger Sheil, accusations of indecency levelled against the swimsuit echo earlier outbursts of attempted puritanism on Australian beaches.

“In 1907, there was a proposal to the law that [male] bathers should wear neck-to-knee suits with modesty skirts,” Sheil says. “Within two days, the men of Sydney rose and organised protests at Coogee and Manly, with the largest at Bondi.

“They had a dead seagull attached to a banner and wore anything that they could cobble together to approximate women’s clothing. It was a carnival atmosphere and the local councils recognised that it was an excessive law.

“Contested bodies dominate the history of swimwear in Australia.”

While swimming briefs remain popular on Australian beaches, they are compulsory in French pools.

“Swimming trunks, as well as Bermuda shorts or board shorts, can be worn all day long,” the French Pool Guide says. “The main reason for banning this type of clothing is to reduce pollution of the pools (hair, sweat, urine residue, etc) in order to preserve the quality of the water.

“Moreover, long shorts are loose fitting and often have pockets. When swimming, it is possible to forget to remove objects such as tissues or papers from the pockets. These objects have no business being in the pool and can end up floating on the surface of the water.”

The British theme park Alton Towers was quite possibly less concerned about hygiene than the French when it banned budgie smugglers in 2009. Meanwhile, in the United States, outside of charity runs and comedy sketches, they remain an oddity.

“If only Freud could have lived long enough to dissect the semiotics of Speedos,” fashion commentator Simon Doonan told Slate. “What would he have made of the US male’s horror of being caught in a tiny swimsuit?”

“Speedo-wearing is also a cultural flashpoint. Revealing men’s swim garments are, for the US consumer, irrevocably associated with ‘foreigners’ and, most terrifying of all, friends of Dorothy.”

Are budgie smugglers gay?

Images of swimming briefs are popular with the gay community for reasons that become increasingly obvious as the water warms up. As acceptance of homosexuality spread in the nineties and noughties, models wearing budgie smugglers featured on the covers of Australian magazines targeted at a gay audience, such as Outrage and DNA, attracting a new breed of swimwear brands.

The most successful of those to find fame through a gay following is aussieBum, which aligned itself with gay political causes and sporting associations. The appeal accelerated when a Kylie Minogue video clip for the hit single Slow in 2003 featured aussieBum, attracting the attention of Selfridge’s department store in London.

AussieBum sold $21.2 million worth of jocks and swimwear worldwide in 2020 – its best year to date – when much of the world was in lockdown because of the COVID-19 crisis. Sales in 2021 reached $13.9 million by September.

Meanwhile, Budgy Smugglers has tapped into a broader audience since 2009 with prints inspired by McDonald’s, XXXX beer, bin chickens and the Aboriginal flag.

Jake Smith, the founder of emerging Australian swimwear label Smithers, which has supported LGBTQIA+ awareness with a Pride collection, says Budgy Smuggler has broadened the audience for swimming-brief styles. “Men here [in Australia] are more adventurous and playful now,” says Smith.

So, budgie smugglers are not gay – they’re pieces of fabric – but if you were going to impose a sexuality on them, fluid is the safest bet.

What’s with politicians and Speedos?

It’s not just onion-munching former prime minister Tony Abbott who courted the media in Speedos. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and former PMs Malcolm Turnbull and Malcolm Fraser have all sported Speedos. They have become part of the unofficial political uniform, along with Akubras in country areas and tracksuits for morning jogs.

Former PM Bob Hawke topped up his tan while wearing Speedos during the annual cricket match between the Prime Minister’s XI and the Parliament in 1986. Even out of office in 1994, he insisted the Illawarra Mercury photograph him alongside his second wife, Blanche d’Alpuget, while clad in his cossie.

Richard Taylor, the curator of the Bondi: A Biography exhibition at the Museum of Sydney in 2011 summed up the swimwear’s instant appeal to voters: “There’s certainly a common theme on Australian beaches, that when you’re stripped down to your Speedos everybody looks the same, it’s very hard to tell rich or poor, so when you’re on the beach everyone is kind of equal.”

It’s why Gough Whitlam allowed himself to be photographed at the Eastland shopping centre in Ringwood buying bright orange and pink Speedos for $1.50 (size 40) in 1974. There is no photographic evidence of him wearing the prized purchase.

How have swimming briefs figured in pop culture?

Women in swimwear have created some of cinema’s most repeated, titillating images – think, Ursula Andress in Dr No – but big-screen budgie moments for men are harder to unearth.

Before a screening of Behind the Candelabra, director Steven Soderbergh’s 2013 movie about the flamboyant pianist Liberace, Matt Damon highlighted some issues.

“With the spray tanning, the Speedos [worn in the film] were actually much smaller than the bikini underwear [the tanning technician] gave me when I got the tan,” Damon told The Sun. “So I had to pull the underwear up the crack of my butt to give myself a Brazilian tan. It’s like getting covered in maple syrup – it’s really gross.”

More natural tans were sported in the 1984 Australian film Coolangatta Gold by Colin Friels and Joss McWilliams (pictured above), who attempted to sport swimming briefs with the same conviction as Ironman champion Grant Kenny.

Jude Law attracted headlines with the ultimate swimsuit power move, wearing luminous white briefs in the trailer for the television series The Young Pope.

Many film critics, however, reserve their thumbs up for Ray Winstone’s gold trunks in Sexy Beast (2000). Winstone’s retired gangster Gary Dove encapsulates brashness by brandishing his briefs as he sunbakes on a lounge. Winstone swiped the trunks from the set and continued to wear them until they became threadbare.

Who wears budgies now?

In the ’70s and ’80s, images of toned athletes fresh from the Olympic pool helped fuel sales of Speedos, but with the launch of the controversial Fastskin suits in 2000 and the increasing popularity of bike-short-style jammers, they have faced stiff competition.

“It’s still one of our most popular silhouettes in terms of volume,” Speedo national sales manager Matthew White says of the classic brief.

“In recent years, there has been a renaissance among twenty and thirtysomethings, who are happy wearing it at the beach instead of a board-short style. It’s a combination of a taking the piss element, where groups of guys wear lairy styles, and increased body confidence in customers.”

Swimwear designer and stylist Michael Azzollini says the briefer togs are often destined to be shared on Instagram accounts. “I will often follow up on who is buying the brief styles,” he says. “They are extremely body conscious and proud of their six-packs. A lot of the customers are gay, but there are also some proud straight guys.”

Above: Sporty types favour jammers (far left), while Daniel Craig as 007 has demonstrated his licence to thrill in aqua shorts (second left). The budgie (front and centre) has been embraced by the hip crowd, as well as being a staple for mature aquatic types. Those who believe in mystery as well as comfort, dip into short style or boardies (far right) but they might also wear budgies underneath for added security.

That body confidence fails to stretch to younger swimmers, though, who seem to take comfort in the greater coverage of the jammer style. Still, since the launch of Speedo jammers, they have failed to dent the traditional briefs’ prime position, alongside the aqua shorts, which have extra centimetres at the hip, but are a tween favourite.

“We are seeing six- to 14-year-olds wearing the jammers, perhaps to emulate their sporting heroes and also because they might feel more comfortable around their peers wearing them,” says White.

As for older customers, the brief styles still rank as the highest seller. “There’s a consumer that picks and sticks,” White says, referring to sun-pashed beach elders.

White says while you might not see swimming briefs at the local pool or beach, they are often lurking underneath other styles.

“A lot of Aussie males wear them beneath their board shorts or their wetsuits. The fact remains, when you’re in the water swimming or bodysurfing, they are effective and don’t drag.”