noun:
a woman's scanty or brief two-piece bathing suit
True enough. But what most conventional definitions
won't tell you is that in the 1950's (as in all
other eras), skin was in. And ever since the
mid-1940's, skin was in a bikini.
The modern bikini bathing suit was born in 1946. Its
namesake was Bikini Atoll, part of the Republic of
the Marshall Islands located in the Central Pacific.
Sadly though, the now famous swimwear was not the
only thing generating heat in that part of the world
at the time.
The Marshall Islands are known to most as the site
of United States nuclear testing in the 1940's and
1950's. Fortunately, the testing has stopped but the
bikini has not.
Designer Louis Reard is credited with designing the
bikini as we know it today. Oddly enough, while few
people kicked up a fuss about nuclear weapon
testing, they were outraged at the brevity of the
garment which took its name from the region where
the tests were being conducted.
(Reard predicted the
burst of excitement over the swimsuit would be like
the atomic bomb).
Reard was right. The bikini was considered so
scandalous that he couldn't find a model to wear his
design. Defying convention, he employed Micheline
Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris
to unveil it in France on July 5, 1946. But the
outrage continued.
The bikini didn't catch on in the United States
until 1957. Popularity grew when it was worn (quite
skillfully) by Brigitte Bardot in the film And God
Created Woman. But Ms. Bardot's hastening of the
demand didn't end an 11-year prude-a-thon. It
actually revived a trend that was over 1,600 years
in the making.
Anthropologists have concluded that what we now call
the bikini was worn long before the 1940's. Ancient
art depicts women wearing the garment as early as
300 B.C.
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