News

#1 Watch where you sit

Gritty surfaces in hot tubs and pools will keep your feet from slipping, but they will also catch and tear tiny fibers in your suit when you sit on them. This is true for any stretchy article of clothing--even a heavy-duty neoprene wetsuit will get a fuzzbutt from sitting on rocks--but we’ve found this fuzz is extra noticeable on Beefcake suits because we print on white fabric.

To avoid the dreaded fuzzbutt, we recommend sitting on towels or inflatable pool toys, which are more comfortable anyway, right?

#2 Rinse immediately after use

Chlorine, sunblock, and even body oils will shorten the life of fabric, so gently rinsing your suit in cool water with a mild detergent soon after every use will help keep it vibrant and soft.

#3 Be gentle

After hand washing, resist the urge to wring out all the water: this can pop stitches and damage fibers. Hanging a swimsuit can stretch out straps. Instead, lay the suit out on a towel, roll the towel up and squeeze gently, then lay out your swimsuit to dry in the shade.

#4 Let it breathe

Experts recommend allowing a swimsuit 24 hours or more to return to its original shape. Rotating between multiple suits can allow each a day or two to recover between uses, which we use as the perfect excuse to own more swimwear. ;)

Many experts also recommend never getting in hot water, but where’s the fun in that? As long as you are careful about the often-gritty surfaces, occasional hot tub dips are fine. Just give your suit a rinse in cool water afterward and let it dry completely.

#5 Have fun!

The good news is that Beefcake suits will never bleed (the sublimated inks bond with the material), are resistant to bacteria (we can attest to this after some long, sweaty days), and are made of pill-resistant fabric, so they should last multiple seasons with proper care. We hope you have tons of fun in yours! 

Mel here, with some real talk about the price of Beefcake swimsuits.

Honestly, I would love to make these swimsuits within the price range for every single person who wants one. My intention for Beefcake Swimwear has never been to start a luxury brand: I want to provide high-quality, American-made swimsuits that are also affordable. 

I have also learned an ugly truth: our idea of "affordable" clothing is full of costs that we as consumers are not paying, but someone pays. We usually just don't hear about it.

When I began researching how to set retail prices, I discovered that very few companies will admit how much it costs to produce their clothes. The only company practicing this "radical transparency" was Everlane, and I was stunned when they said most retailers mark up their clothes between five and six times the cost of manufacturing. This means a $35 swimsuit probably costs between $1.10 and $2.19 to produce, and that number includes raw materials AND labor. No matter what country you live in, there's no way a person getting paid less than $2.19 to sew a swimsuit is making a living wage. 

I highly recommend watching True Cost (currently on Netflix). It's an incredible documentary about what our clothes actually cost, in terms of humans and the environment, and the damage "fast fashion" is wreaking on our fellow humans and our environment.

It feels like this issue is starting to get on folks' radar, with articles like Newsweek's Fast Fashion is Creating an Environmental Crisis, Forbes' Fast Fashion is a Disaster for Women and the Environment, and wide coverage of the 2013 factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1,130 employees. 

As I learned about all of this, I decided that Beefcake Swimwear will never be a part of the harm and waste of "fast fashion" retail practices, even if that means we cannot compete on price with retail companies who make thousands of suits in factories abroad. Instead, we are doing small batches at a woman-owned manufacturer in the USA, and we believe this approach is worth higher costs.

Speaking of transparency, as of this post, I haven't paid myself a cent, and I've been working on Beefcake Swimwear since 2015. I'm lucky to have a day job which provides a living wage and health insurance while I figure out how to make this company sustainable. Almost 50% of startups don't make it past the first four years, so we're still in the danger zone.

Also, I am not marking up these swimsuits as much as I "should" because I think that pricing things as high as "the market will bear" is predatory and ethically wrong. I do not view Beefcake Swimsuit customers as consumers--you are my fellow humans, as are the people printing and sewing these suits. I'm committed to growing Beefcake Swimwear sustainably, and I immensely appreciate folks who not only understand how rare and challenging it is to be an LGBTQ and woman-owned business making clothes in the USA, but who support us. This is a pretty wild endeavor, and we're so glad to have you along for the ride.

TL; DR I realize our swimsuits are more expensive than big-box stores, and I still think doing small-batch, American-made swimwear at a woman-owned factory is worth it. And please watch The True Cost. 

"Beefcake..." said the kid, staring at my hat. "Is that, like, a cake made of meat?"

"Uh, no," I replied. "It's like a muscle man?"

The kid looked skeptical. I resisted the urge to launch into the full history of beefcake and why it's a perfect name for a queer lady-owned company making androgynous swimsuits from the 1920s. Instead, I'll post it here!

While there are recipes for beef cake, we didn't name our swimwear company after a frosted meatloaf. 😏 Our "beefcake" comes from "cheesecake," a term dating back to the 1660s in Britain to describe sexy ladies. Cheesecake reached peak popularity in the US in the 1930s and 1940s, along with pin-up photography of ladies showing a lot of leg. (Some sources say "cheesecake" was coined because these ladies' stockings resembled the layered dessert, but we are skeptical.) In any case, this variation of "cheesecake" is rarely used anymore.

The male version of cheesecake, a.k.a. "beefcake," emerged in the late 1940s and has stuck around. Several sources point to Sidney Skolsky, a midcentury Hollywood columnist, as the person who coined the term. A beefcake was rugged, handsome, and muscular, and often showed off those muscles in very little clothing--essentially, a male pin-up. Or a subject in "male physique photography" if you want to be less cheeky (pun intended). 

Today if you google "beefcake" without the "swimwear," as Mel's mom-in-law did (hilarious story, btw) you'll pull up some very NSFW homoerotic photos. Do we know this? Yes. Do we have any problem whatsoever with it? Nope.

To us, the term "beefcake" is a little retro, a little queer, and skews masculine-of-center. You're most likely to encounter it in the hashtag #beefcakestatus along with photos of folks lifting barbells and getting swole. We love all of this.

Our hope is that someone wearing Beefcake Swimwear will feel confident, playful, and strong, no matter their size or shape or age or gender identity. We love hearing stories from folks wearing a swimsuit for the first time in years (!!) and sending us photos of them on a beach, in a pool, ziplining over water, and feeling awesome.

We've heard from moms who love the coverage while playing on the beach with their kids, from grandmas and teens trying to find modest swimwear that doesn't involve ruffles and skirts, from tomboys and butches who want masculine swimwear, and from male-identified swimmers who don't want to go topless. In other words, beefcakes are everywhere! We love shipping out swimsuits that make them happy.

Thanks for joining us in the journey. Get after it, beefcakes!

Beefcake Swimwear swimsuits are made in the USA! Specifically in Portland, Oregon, at a woman-owned manufacturer. We use a technique called sublimation printing, which means the inks turn into gas under the influence of heat and combines with the material. The color will never fade or crack, even after multiple washings. Every swimsuit is individually printed on white polyester (if you ever had paper dolls, it looks a little like their clothes).

After being printed, each piece of the suit is cut out: the front, the back, and the crotch. These get sewn together, with binding added around the arms and neckline and a thin silicone strip sewn into the leg openings. As of April 2018, each suit is fully lined in the front.

We're proud to be offering American-made swimwear and supporting our neighbors (often literally--Portland is smaller than you'd think). Thanks for being a part of this! 

Hi! My name is Mel and I'm the founder of Beefcake Swimwear. 

I had the idea for Beefcake a couple years ago when I invited a friend of mine to the beach and she said she didn’t have a swimsuit. She dressed very masculine, but she didn’t like wearing board shorts and a rash guard. “What I really want,” she told me, “Is one of those old-fashioned swimsuits, like from the 1920s.” This got me thinking.

The first time I made a swimsuit, I was five years old. I desperately wanted a pink bikini, but my mom and grandma said bikinis were immodest. As a determined little kid, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I cut out two circles of pink construction paper and stapled them to a stretchy pink belt. Voila! My family was amused...but didn’t actually let me wear it. (Probably good, because paper is a terrible material to swim in.)

This time, I’ve worked with professional designers, pattern makers, and manufacturers to create modern versions of 1920s swimsuits. We're custom-printing the material and sewing up the suits right here where I live and work and surf--in Portland, Oregon. 

As a tomboy lez myself, I'm stoked to have a one-piece androgynous swimsuit. I'm even more stoked to share these suits with others. I want people with bodies of all shapes and sizes and genders to feel strong and attractive--to feel like beefcakes.

The first two Beefcake swimsuit designs are ready! Our American manufacturer is sublimating (a.k.a. printing) custom fabric and sewing the final prototypes as we speak. Read all about this process and see a photo by clicking here.

These suits may look like the 1920s, but they'll feel and perform like the 21st century. We're getting all our social media accounts up and running, and planning rewards for our Kickstarter campaign in March. Stay tuned, Beefcakes.

When I first sketched out a pattern for a 1920s-style swimsuit, I had more questions than answers (that eraser was accurate). It was an idea that had been rattling around my brain for nearly two years, and I was finally ready to tackle it. About a year later, that sketch has become a reality. I'm so excited to get Beefcake Swimwear launched big-time through a Kickstarter this spring. The suits are coming, Beefcakes!