The bikini idealistically represents liberation, but the reality is if you are not a pretty young thing you are going to be harshly judged.
Jennifer Love Hewitt
With headlines in the tabloids like ‘Jennifer Love Hewitt looks fat in a bikini’ you have to wonder which body type the bikini is actually made for. Let’s face it; the girl is far from fat.
The prominent blogger, suitably called Feminist, responded to this headline and wrote, ‘Hewitt had the audacity to appear in public in a bikini while also in possession of a body that hadn’t been dieted and exercised down to nothing or airbrushed to smooth perfection…I’m very pleased that she recognises that fat-shaming is designed to keep women in line.’
From this comment, which is not unique, it is clear that the bikini will always go hand in hand with strong emotions and opinions. Having spoken to a few friends about their thoughts on the bikini, consensus is that the garment idealistically represents liberation, but the reality is if you are not a pretty young thing who is stretchmarkless, celluliteless, size 34 and below, then most likely the feeling that will stay with you longer than the sand under your wet lycra from a judgemental society is humiliation. Fair? No. But what in life is.
The Flawless Body
This obsession with the ‘flawless’ body and the privileges it comes with is a relatively new thing. The ‘bikini girls’ mosaic, below, shows women with charming love handles and pot bellies frolicking about happily. No one knows for sure, but it is suspected that this may have been one of the first swimming costumes in existence.
Drawing evidence from 300 AD Roman mosaics, historians point to the bikini as the preferred swimsuit for ancient Roman women. The history of the bikini, however, may have begun nearly 2000 years earlier.
Minoan wall paintings from approximately 1600 BC also depict women wearing the two-piece bathing costume. But these are bygone times where what one wore was driven by practicality and not sexuality or power.
Nice Girls
My own assumption is that these attires were short lived because of increasing restrictions on what ‘nice’ girls can and can’t do – so more conservative clothing, among many other boundaries, was introduced into society. As a result there was no sign of the bikini until it was reintroduced to the world in 1946; a time when attractive women where called ‘bombshells’ and anything powerful was ‘atomic’.
Such adjectives were fitting as World War II had just ended, and the world was still dazed from the horrendous nature of this conflict in which the United States dropped the controversial atomic bomb on two Japanese cities to end the Pacific War. The United States was setting off further test bombs in Bikini Atoll (part of Marshall Islands) during the same time as Louis Reard, an engineer and Jacques Heim, a fashion designer, both French nationals, were credited with the invention of le bikini - the name implying it was as momentous an invention as the new bomb.
The Power of the Bikini
Needless to say, the destructive power of the atomic bomb easily matches what a woman in a bikini can do. And that’s just it with the bikini, isn’t it? You can’t be fragile when wearing it because you are open to social scrutiny and commentary.
That is why when Reard planned to showcase his swimsuit creation at a Paris fashion show he was unable to find any Parisian models who would be seen in the skimpy garment. Finally, he hired Micheline Bernardini, a model who also worked as a stripper in a Paris nightclub, to debut the bikini to the fashion world. Enough said.
A Visual Feast
From the moment the bikini was launched it was accepted that these little numbers would be a visual feast. Because of this (especially if the body wearing it has just crawled out of the water and it is still shimmering in wetness) I have deduced that this makes it sexual.
And, because it is sexual, many cultures and religions disapprove of this attire. And because it isn’t accepted in most groups the bikini has earned its way into being one of the strongest signs of liberation. The woman who wears it seems to communicate, ‘I am proud of my body, so fuck off.’
Bitsy Teenie Weenie
The most significant move towards acceptance of the bikini happened during the 60’s with the release of the popular song, ‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’, which propelled the swimsuit into an icon of popular culture. On top of this, a number of beach-themed movies like ‘How to Stuff a Wild Bikini’ served to popularise the bikini even further among teenage girls.
In keeping with the trend, in 1962 Ursula Andress rocketed to fame for her role in the James Bond classic, Dr No. Afterwards the actress said of the sexy belted swimsuit, ‘This bikini made me into success.’
That white bikini has been described as a defining moment in the sixties liberalisation of screen eroticism. This of course is all typical from a decade that was completely dedicated to liberation movements of all sorts. High on the list was female liberty and equality – the message was clear from both women and the media at large that ‘wearing a bikini does not make you a stripper’. So in 1964, the bikini made it to the cover of Sports Illustrated for the first time.
Interestingly enough with the 60s liberation movements also came a huge shift in body stereotypes and ideology. This is the time when skinny models like Twiggy, Verushka and Farrah Fawcett turned what was often thought of as a pastime into a proper career.
The advent of this new breed of model would change how people perceived attractiveness and sexiness. Emily Post, a 60s American etiquette author, declared, ‘(A bikini) is for perfect figures only, and for the very young.’ co
Of urse many people disagreed with her, verbally, but in reality the media only showed women who fitted this profile in their campaigns. To a large extent people buy into the ideals that the media puts forward and so we saw a rise in women's magazines featuring articles like, ‘How to have bikini abs in 14 days’.
And ‘Bikini Belly’ workout programs were launched to develop a ‘bikini-worthy body’. In the very same mediums features like ‘I tried to kill myself because I was fat’ and ‘10 ways to identify if you are anorexic’ increased year on year. Hmmm?
Confidence Needed
So there has been this interesting tug of war between female activists saying that confidence alone can make a woman of any size and age appealing in a bikini, while billboards and TV commercials show that you have to have hard abs and a tight butt to make this look sexy. The truth is, if you are going to put yourself out there (and you are because you really are almost naked), people will look and they will make judgements.
The bikini is a sexy, skimpy outfit and human nature never disappoints, it will oblige to that. For instance, research shows that bikinis can make men more prone to seek immediate gratification — leading to blown diets, budgets and bank accounts. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Research it was revealed that viewing ads with women in bikinis led men to value the future less and the present more; that is, it makes them impulsive.
For women, is this a kind of power if you know how to use it to your advantage? Or is it again one of those scenarios where we think we have won, but in reality have really moved ten steps backward in terms of emancipation?
