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 fuzz, avoid sitting on pool stairs, and make sure you sit on towels or inflatable pool toys, which are more comfortable anyway! 

#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. Also, try to avoid sunscreen with avobenzone, as this can stain a swimsuit yellow. (There's a good post here about removing these stains.) 

#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 is not to be a luxury brand. Instead, I'm trying to provide sustainably & ethically manufactured swimwear with an inclusive range of sizes, and to make them affordable. So, the unicorns of swimwear!

I've learned an ugly truth while trying to do this: our idea of "affordable" clothing is full of costs that we as consumers are not paying, but someone pays. 

Very few companies will admit how much it costs to produce their clothes. One of the earliest to practice "radical transparency" was Everlane. 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 getting paid less than $2.19 to sew an entire swimsuit is a living wage. 

I highly recommend watching The 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 inflicting on both. 

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 using the best fabric available, with 100% recycled polyester content. 

I am not marking up these swimsuits as much as I "should" because I think that pricing items 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 appreciate folks who understand how rare and challenging it is to be an LGBTQ and woman-owned business making eco-friendly swimsuits in the USA. 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 ethical and sustainable manufacturing is worth our prices. 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. Our fabric comes from Italy, but all the magic happens in PDX.

Our manufacturer uses 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. 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 ethically manufactured swimwear and to be supporting our neighbors (often literally--Portland is smaller than you'd think). Thanks for being a part of this!