"Thongs and G-string swimwear is not acceptable for males or females..."

Summer is turning downright wild in Australia. Yesterday, we learned that multiple popular Sydney-area beaches had been shuttered after becoming inundated with alien balls. Manly, Dee Why, Long Reef, Queenscliff, Freshwater, North and South Curl Curl, North Steyne and North Narrabeen, each very featuring very fine surf breaks, currently closed to the public while scientists poke around in the sand, attempting to understand where the little grey and white blobs came and of what they are made. Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins gamely declaring, “We don’t know at the moment what it is and that makes it even more concerning. There’s something that’s obviously leaking or dropping… floating out there and being tossed around.”

Well, surf sun worshippers looking to get a fix of vitamin D from local pools instead of the beaches better tread very carefully. In a move that further stunned the staggering suburbs, a council in Greater Sydney has announced a ban on g-string bikini bottoms. A leisure center, which owns five pools, attempted to explain, posting, “Much of [the confusion] focused on a poster showing the kind of swimwear that is and isn’t appropriate. It’s important to remember that these images are indicative only. In particular, the image of ‘revealing swimwear/thongs’ has raised some eyebrows. This image refers to thongs and G-strings – not bikini tops and bottoms. Thongs and G-string swimwear is not acceptable for males or females when visiting our leisure centres. Bikinis are acceptable and considered recognised swimwear.”

Thong and g-string users were quick to denounce their marginalization and took to social media, en masse, declaring, “If you don’t like it, don’t look” and “So long as [practicality] and safety are considered it shouldn’t be any one else’s business what I’m comfortable swimming in.”

Cultural expert Lauren Rosewarne told The Guardian that Australia has a long history policing women’s bodies, adding, “The undercurrent of these stories is that somehow women are doing something with their bodies to distract men in ways that make men feel as though they’re being tempted, and it’s up to women to sort themselves out … Somehow, the responsibility is on women not to stir desires in men, because then men might act badly and be punished, so we have to put the responsibility of morality on to women’s shoulders.”

The final dagger delivered at the end.

“Not everything is sexual just because you see it as such.”

The uproar has not yet put an end to the draconian rule change though do you have an opinion on the matter?

Should decency be policed?

Or are you a live-and-let-live sort?

More as the story develops.

Big n burly!

"We don't know at the moment what it is and that makes it even more concerning."

To declare that these are the strangest of times is a severe understatement. I suppose the thick of the Black Death days, when folk wandered around with dried toads hung from their necks, were also the strangest of times. Australia’s Emu Wars certainly very strange, too, but here at the dawn of 2025 we have Southern California burning, North Korean soldiers wandering around in Ukraine and alien balls washing up on Sydney’s iconic beaches forcing mass shutterings in the heat of summer.

Manly, Dee Why, Long Reef, Queenscliff, Freshwater, North and South Curl Curl, North Steyne and North Narrabeen, each very featuring very fine surf breaks, currently closed to the public.

Six months ago, alien balls washed up on famed Bondi Beach, forcing closure there too, but those ones were black and turned out to be fatty acids, though the Environmental Protection Agency disputed the notion, declaring it, “can’t explain the source of the human waste causing the fatbergs and it can’t assure the public that Sydney’s beaches are safe to use.”

These new ones are white or grey and completely cryptic.

Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins old the Guardian that they “could be anything,” continuing, “We don’t know at the moment what it is and that makes it even more concerning. There’s something that’s obviously leaking or dropping… floating out there and being tossed around.”

Surfers are encouraged to call the authorities if and when they come across the foreign bits.