Totally sympathise with your dilemma. I’ve had a similar problem on a ship pool deck wearing a swim brief by the pool (only a metre from pool itself & next to loungers with people in swim suits). Was told by a crew member I couldn’t eat lunch at a table there in briefs & would have to change into shorts like all the other guys. When I asked whether a female in a swimsuit would be asked to change too, the answer was yes. I changed to keep the harmony. Next day a female sits for lunch in a swimsuit at a table & isn’t challenged by that crew member (or any other crew) even though he’s looking at her. I’m afraid I gave in to my annoyance & pointed out the hypocrisy & dishonesty of the day before. I also asked to enforce the standard uniformly as I was told it would be but discretely. It was enforced but as payback it was not discretely done & involved pointing out I was the complainant. I could have saved a lot of pain & aggravation by just complying but I strongly feel if there’s a standard & it’s uniform so be it. No problem. But when it’s one rule for some & one rule for another, it should be challenged. That said, not everyone wants the grief of challenging. Ultimately it’s a personal choice. If comfortable challenge. If not, leave it. There’s no point adding to the anxiety by challenging if uncomfortable about it.
PS My wife would have preferred I didn’t challenge either day even though she was equally irritated by the ridiculousness of the request (hesitate to call it a rule) & the hypocrisy next day. Good example of how the response can only ever be an individual choice
Curious as to what cruise line that was?
Regent Seven Seas Navigator
Interesting, only ask as my wife is a travel agentbthat books a lot of cruises. Thankfully, i had no issues with my thongs on Silver Sea.
It is a very long, and still painful story, but the Navigator was the cruise from hell. Aspects of that cruise are (were) anecdotally standard Regent Seven Sea (RSS) issues. Changed itineraries, late in to port, crew with no clue, a seeming inability to deal with port authorities in a timely way, inability to dock in vaguely bad weather, and worst of all everything had to be funnelled through HQ in Florida (?) and required a ‘form’ to be filled out. The Navvigator as a ship is like an old barge. There is a documentary/series on Netflix or something about one of their cruises which is a cruel hoax. One example & I’ll stop ranting. I asked the guest services desk that organised passenger requests for land tours etc to organise a ferry or better still (given ferry timetables) a small private water taxi from Mykonos to Tinos (return). The guy shot back ‘what type of Mercedes Benz car’ we wanted. I was gobsmacked. My wife recovered more quickly & explained there was water between Mykonos & Timos and Mercedes didn’t do amphibious hire vehicles. He said leave it with him after I explained again it was either scheduled ferry or local ferry/boat like the fisher boats used in Mykonos in summer to get to Paradise Bay etc. I actually even said I didn’t need a ‘gin palace’. Unbelievably, he rang back with ‘good news’. He’d organised it ie US$10,000 gin palace for a day & we would have capacity for 10 people. We gave up in the end. It sounds like exaggeration. Sadly it isn’t. It was at the beginning of the cruise & an omen of much worse to come including that we never made it into Mykonos. There are cruisers that seem to be happy with RSS & its faults. We’ve cruised with Silversea, Ponant, Azamara & Seabourn. All were good & the first two lines exceptional. RSS in our experience didn’t come anywhere near them on any measure
BTW have had no issues with thongs on any cruise ship I’ve been on (even the Navigator) albeit I’ve been careful about when & where I wear them
I’m not sure what more I can be expected to do beyond observing other people’s behavior and asking management directly, which is an effort far beyond what a typical patron invests before choosing a swimsuit. If I see other patrons wearing thongs, and if management explicitly tells me it’s allowed, I have done my due diligence. I have read the room.
My frustration with the current American sauna culture is that these businesses are projecting an image that doesn’t align with their own values. They have minimal dress codes because anything more specific would be uptight. Their social media marketing features conventionally attractive women wearing thongs while enjoying their facilities. When contacted and asked if it’s okay to wear a thong swimsuit, they say, “Of course,” and act like it’s a silly question.
They want all the benefits of being a laid-back, body-positive space without any of the drawbacks, chiefly that more traditional patrons who expect conservative swimwear styles may not be comfortable patronizing their business.
Public places are held to a different standard. The people running them understand that it’s impossible to please everyone and try to find a middle ground that reflects the values of the community at large. We can debate whether or not they succeed at that, but their goals are completely different from those of a private business.
That’s what I wish I had done at the gym and what I tried to do when confronted with the same problem at the sauna. They’re not my friends. I don’t owe them any favors. It is completely reasonable to expect businesses to treat all of their customers with the same level of respect and create policies that function regardless of gender, sexuality, or body type. If they can’t do that, they don’t deserve me as a customer.
Ultimately, they were forced to say out loud what they were trying to keep hidden and changed their policy, which was the only real option available to them. As a result, they’ve lost any future business from me.
I think it’s important to consider the possibility that the staff has probably not had a male come in wearing a thong before and as it is unusual they do not have a policy for it … which is why I believe you likely got mixed messages. Probably bad on the company for not having discussed this probability and had a defined policy but understandable that they floundered in how they are handled the situation imo.
Personally, like yourself, I would be disappointed but I would not have been shocked with how it was handled. The staff just wasn’t prepared or equipped with how to handle the situation.
I feel like on message boards like this we often get into a bubble of acceptance. I know it’s empowering to me to read and hear from so many thong wearers (especially men). The reality in most cases is that men and women wearing thongs is not an apples to apples comparison and expecting acceptance of both sexes wearing thongs isn’t the world we live in most cases. There are plenty of pools and resorts that allow women to wear thongs or basically whatever they want but men can’t even wear briefs.