a brief history of baring it all

Finally, a posting worthy of dedicating to my big sister Rebecca! ; )

Ain't she cute? Ok, no that's not my sister, but this photo does bring back memories of the voluptuous teenager she was, very cute and curvy--I was more long and, um, sleek (the opposite of curvy, if you will).

This image comes from a fascinating photo-essay on Slate.com, about the history of the bikini. Two pieces (ha!) of information I learned from the article: First, when the bikini first came on the scene in Paris, the models there were so scandalized they refused to model it. So who did the designer find to model? A stripper named Micheline Bernardini, pictured above.

Second, before the bikini, women's swimwear took its modesty cues from the movies. Fascinating!

Notable quotation from the photo essay: A few years ago, Sports Illustrated dug up a 1957 issue of Modern Girl that declared: "It is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing."

http://www.slate.com/id/2221241/?obref=obinsite

This is all the more interesting when contrasted with an article I read when visiting Susan in Colorado Springs (it was from a magazine in your living room, Susan--maybe a Newsweek?) that discussed the recent "alarming" trend among young French women to be more modest in their swimwear, esp. eschewing the topless beaches.

My own opinions about bikinis developed mainly from two realization: one, that most women look worse and not better when they bare it all; second, that I believe modesty is valuable, and want to instill an appreciation of it in my chidren.

We are not at all prudes around the house, partly out of practicality:

And partly because we are trying to teach the children to think their bodies and what their bodies do are good, beautiful, natural things. That their bodies are designed brilliantly, and should be admired for their miraculous qualities and their intrinsic aesthetics. That nothing about our bodies is bad except how we sometimes choose to use them to hurt or offend others. How our bodies and spirits are part of a whole person, and we cannot separate one from the other, and so what we do with out bodies affects our spirits, and vice versa.

Clearly there are so many ways we could talk about this subject and get really deep and profound, but let's just get back to the bikinis. ; )

Most of you probably have figured out that our girls will not be wearing skin-baring clothing until they are out on their own--what they do as adults will be completely up to them. But as kids, I have the perfect beachwear for them:

Not a great pic--taken when visiting a friend with a pool!--but you can see their swimwear, which is most decidedly modest. But that is not why I love these suits, which we get from a company out here in CA called Tuga Swimwear. I love them because:

--no more slathering on sunscreen! with these SPF rated suits and their sunhats they are protected fully unless we are out for a long time or in very intense sun, when we still need to lather arms and legs and faces. Esp. no more burned areas on shoulders and backs where regular suits rub off the sunscreen or where parent fingers sometimes don't get the lotion all the way to the edges of the suit!

--no more sand rubbing painfully in tender areas! No more sand in diapers! Even when the kids bury themselves in the sand!

--no sand in the crotch means no sand sneaking home in the suimsuit crotch to spill all over the bathroom floor when girls clean off in the shower! (ok, some still sticks to the fabric, so we still strip out on the back deck when we come from the beach--but nothing like my memories of the handful of beach we would be sitting on all the way back to Aunt Rosalie's house in, when we would strip in the shower and watch it go down the shower drain. Bring back memories, Rebecca?)

--we can go from playground to beach, etc. and the kids are more comfortable and ready for anything!

When the girls are older, they may not go for the full coverage swim combos anymore (the one-piece only go up to age 6 anyway, but I love the bike short/rashguard oldest sister G is wearing in the pic), but luckily it shouldn't be because they are not "cool"--because while California is the home of the bikini here in the USA, it is also the home of surfing USA, so a lot of the coolest girls wear rashguards and board shorts! Great white shark fears aside, I'll take a surfer girl over a stripper girl anytime!

So, there you have it, a bare bones (ha! i am really on a roll. a pathetic roll, but a roll.) perspective on swimwear past, present and future.

Photograph of Micheline Bernardini in 1946 courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Dedicated to my big sister, of the bikini worthy curves, who now has two beautiful and modest teenage daughters. ; )