Louis Reard and the bikini
Wikipedia photo
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Historically,
evidence has been found of bathing suit-style clothing in 5600 B.C. and at
athletic events in Rome. The most famous and best-preserved evidence discovered
consists of the mosaics in Villa Romana del Casale.
Quite
fitting, the Villa Romana del Casale, an elaborate fourth century A.D. Roman
villa, was found about 3 km from the town of Piazza Armerina, Sicily, a place
bathed in sunshine, resplendent with beaches, and a balmy Mediterranean
climate.
Photo: italianways.com
He dressed a
nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, Micheline, in a two-piece bathing suit on
July 1946 and introduced her to the public at Piscine Molitor, a popular and
fashionable public pool in Paris. It happened three weeks after atomic bomb
tests were conducted by the United States on the Marshall Islands Pacific atoll
named Bikini, so he decided to name his creation “the bikini.”
The amount
of fabric used for such a piece of clothing varies today on the amount of
covering it offers to the chest and to the bottom area. The most recent swimsuits
are just G-strings, exposing plenty of the human anatomy. However, it is still
modest by European nude beach rules.
Going to an
American beach today is an interesting fashion show both in clothing choices or
lack thereof and in artistic tattoos on various parts of the beach goer’s
bodies.
Young and
nubile women are sporting naked rears, their breasts spilling out of tiny
strips and other unmentionables barely covered, stretching provocatively in the
sand to the delight of ogling men who enjoy the narcissistic show. One can
barely blame them as so much is on display and beauty is in the eyes of the
beholder.
At the other
extreme, women in full burkas with their kids and husbands in tow, sweating in
black, covered from head to tow while their husbands are wearing comfortable
American swim trunks. Perhaps there should be a middle ground between the skimpy
bikinis and the burka tents.
Older men
are wearing tiny Speedos, confident in their athleticism and manliness, with
skin so tanned and dry that it looks positively mummified.
Seaside
attire is not the only curiosity at the beach. Young women with verbal diarrhea
use the English language in a way that would horrify anyone sitting in their
hearing range – the F word or other choice vulgar expressions pepper their
vocabulary every other word. Drinking like sailors regardless of age and
smoking like chimneys on a cold day, completes the picture of our young American
progenies at the beach.
So much
societal degradation on display makes me sad. Perhaps I am too old to
appreciate “progress,” and the new “feminism.”
You are quite right, Ileana, but your comment about the old men in Speedos has me dying laughing!
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