Ladies, the time of the bathing suit is among us. Whether you go for a simple one piece or a sexy bikini, you probably aren’t rushing to the store to buy a bathing machine or a bathing costume.
Bathing machine? Bathing costume? What does that even mean?
For women, browsing through hundreds of styles and selections of swimsuits at the local Target hasn’t always been an option. Believe it or not, there was a time where modesty was highly valued by society, especially for women.
During the 19th century, women looking to swim in the ocean would have to use a wheeled hut pulled by horses called a bathing machine. Inside of this machine, women would change into a bathing costume, which resembled a long dress with bloomers and stockings. The horse would pull them to the edge of the ocean and block the shore behind them, allowing them to enjoy the water without being seen.
Not much longer after that, women began to wear more revealing styles of swimwear. That is, they began to show off their ankles and legs. Women could be asked to leave beaches and swimming pools for not covering their lower halves and could even be arrested in more conservative areas.
In the 1920s, the U.S. passed laws prohibiting women from wearing bathing suits that were shorter than six inches above the knee.
It was not until the 1930s that the bathing suit cut down, shortened up, and cinched in with the “bombshell” one piece, which clung to the torso and showed of a woman’s physique. In the most revealing cases, these bathing suits were strapless or may have had a built in bustier.
Although this style was much more revealing than any bathing suit before it, it was still more modest than the bathing suits that are commonly seen today.
In fact, when French Designer Louis Réard first introduced the bikini in 1946, people were less than pleased by the design. Although two piece swimsuits began to work their way into the fashion scene, two pieces had always covered the midriff and were never to reveal the belly button.
Réard’s bikini was considered so scandalous that he couldn’t even find a model to debut it — he had to hire a stripper.
Many years later, the bikini became popular in France, but not so much in the U.S. Women could be kicked off of U.S. beaches for wearing them.
The U.S. resisted the bikini-wave until the 1960s when the bikini became a symbol of the youthful liberation and the women’s movement. The bikini was popularized by pop singer Brian Hyland with his enduring hit “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.”
With this history in mind, now we can understand why the woman who was wearing the itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini was afraid to come out of the locker room.
Today, the bikini is so popular you can see women of all ages, shapes and sizes wearing a variety of bikini styles on beaches and at pools. The style of bathing suit a woman wears no longer defines her modesty and the bikini is considered a bathing suit standard.
Over the past 100 years, our definition of modesty has come a long way. So this spring, when you are at the store struggling to make a choice on a two piece or one piece or even a half a piece, remember the women before us being hauled to the edge of the water in a full set of clothing — those who took one for the team.