The Bikini Syndrome

 

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It’s summer: time for all teenage boys — and old men like me — to thank the good lord for inventing the bikini.

In 1909, Australian Annette Kellerman was arrested on a Boston beach. Her crime? A polio victim, she’d taken up swimming to strengthen her legs. One day she wore a tight-fitting, black, wool one-piece suit that did away with the traditional skirts and sleeves that were hitherto de rigueur for women’s bathing costumes.

“I can’t swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline,” the Diving Venus complained. The women’s one-piece swimsuit had arrived. Western civilization was headed towards perdition.

Call it the Bikini Syndrome, even though it came 37 years before the actual bikini. A Frenchman, Louis Reard, invented the bikini in 1946. He created a bathing costume so skimpy that it was first called Atome — in reference to the Atom Bomb that had just been exploded on Bikini Atoll. Though his design was a “bombshell,” he named it after the island, not the device.

When asked to describe what constituted a “true bikini”, he said it wasn’t a bikini unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring. Gotta love the French.

Guys like me have to be aware of the Bikini Syndrome. Not because we are inveterate lechers (we are), but because we are prone to see new ideas and new ways of thinking as the end of civilization as we know it.

This is not about the virtues (or lack thereof) of swimsuit fashions. It is about how we react to changing styles and changing times.

As we age, we gain wisdom in almost every area except one: recognizing that the young will inevitably demand that the world be different than the one into which we brought them. We will resist.

This is most apparent in the world of fashion and language, but it pertains to politics, religion, art, literature, culture, education, manners … you name it. From the beginning of time, each generation has been convinced that the generation following it has worse manners, is less well-educated and is more licentious.

Despite what pop psychology may say, however, not all standards are relative, however. There really is good and evil, right and wrong, civility and incivility, kindness and meanness. As Herbet Marcuse postulated, there are real truths and false truths.  It is the job of the civilized man to discern the difference.

As we’ve learned from the Bikini Syndrome, civilization doesn’t end each time a different generation decides to show more skin than the previous one. Excess skin never did make young girls the slatterns their parents thought they were. As a father of two daughters, I know: Another man’s daughter in a bikini looks racy, whereas mine embraces the innocence of the youthful flowering of womanhood. (When my kid brings her laundry home, it contains tons of outfits, but ounces of fabric).

Does anybody remember the 60s? Entire families were torn apart over hair. Boys were thrown out on the street for growing hair on their faces, girls for letting it grow under their arms or on their legs. Each act was considered a sin against both nature and America.

A s we age, how do we discern the difference between “Real Truths” and “False Truths”? Are tattoos and piercing the same as hair in the 60s or the advent of the two-piece suit in the 40s? How about drugs or unfettered sex in magazines, on TV, in the movies and of course, the Internet? Are these just signs of youth thumbing their noses at us old folks, or are they destroying the fabric of society as we know it?

What is clear, is that man and civilization tend to survive. The question becomes “in what form?”

In 450 B.C. democracy flourished in Athens. With the exception of some isolated instances, we didn’t see it again until 1776. What happened?

Is it fair to assume that certain types of behavior are more conducive to a democratic life than one under totalitarian rule? Free people agree to follow certain rules. They embrace certain “Truths” — such as freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, and the enforcement of contracts. Those in a totalitarian state need only follow the dictates of the “Big Guy.” In other words, arresting Annette Kellerman: bad. Taking out Saddam: good.

Fashion is one thing, principles another. Fashion is relative; principles are eternal. Truth is never relative. “Truth is beauty, and beauty truth/That is all ye know and all ye need to know.” Keats knew what he was saying.

The answer? Embrace the Bikini Syndrome while holding fast to principles. The truth is unbending — but when it comes to fashion, swim with the current.

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  1. user_1938 Inactive
    user_1938
    @AaronMiller

    Jeffrey Earl Warren: Is it fair to assume that certain types of behavior are more conducive to a democratic life than one under totalitarian rule?

    The opposite of democracy is monarchy/empire. The opposite of totalitarian government is limited government. Too often, democracy is conflated with limited government, which it is not.

    Why did democracy disappear for so many centuries? It wasn’t because the queen was telling kids to stay away from sugars and fats. Now that you mention it, I’m surprised that “the First Lady” (a title if ever there was one) hasn’t advised American girls on skirt length and permissible cleavage yet.

    • #1
  2. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Meh.

    In an age when joggers regularly go about in dayglo sports bras and short shorts, the bikini’s pretty much lost its shock value.

    Gimme a well-toned woman in a dark blue one-piece, any day.

    • #2
  3. Ryan M Inactive
    Ryan M
    @RyanM

    hah!  I’ve got to agree with Misthio to a certain extent – a skimpy outfit does not a beautiful woman make.  I almost always look at the face, first.  ;)

    But I recently told my wife – who is a beautiful woman – this about the beach.  If we go, regardless of what you’re wearing, I’ll be thinking about sex the whole time.  I mean, I might get distracted with the swimming (which I love) for a while, but every time I see you, it’s going to be right there in my mind.  So be prepared for that; and I’ll probably be quite persistent.  Of course, we don’t live anywhere near a beach.

    • #3
  4. doc molloy Inactive
    doc molloy
    @docmolloy

    Paula Stafford and the bikini revolution  And Lileks like postcard stills.

    The ‘invention’ of the bikini—a two piece swimsuit with briefs cut well below the navel—is usually credited to Frenchman Louis Réard, in 1946. The bikini thus differs from earlier two-piece bathing suits, which well and truly pre-dated Réard’s design, but featured briefs cut up to the waist, covering the navel. Paula Stafford is believed to have been the first to introduce the naval exposing design to Australia, making exceptionally scant bikinis, and also pioneering the use of unusual fabrics, backless bikini tops, and reversible garments.

    The bikini can take a toll though..

    • #4
  5. user_1938 Inactive
    user_1938
    @AaronMiller

    The funny thing about modern swimsuits is that a woman who feels confident in a minimal bikini feels scandalized if caught in less revealing underwear. There’s more to modesty than covering up. 

    At a wedding I recently attended, many people quickly wondered about one girl for wearing a dress that looked like a long shirt. It was longer than many skirts, but she still looked like a tramp wearing a shirt and no pants.

    • #5
  6. doc molloy Inactive
    doc molloy
    @docmolloy

    Aaron Miller:

    The funny thing about modern swimsuits is that a woman who feels confident in a minimal bikini feels scandalized if caught in less revealing underwear. There’s more to modesty than covering up.

    At a wedding I recently attended, many people quickly wondered about one girl for wearing a dress that looked like a long shirt. It was longer than many skirts, but she still looked like a tramp wearing a shirt and no pants.

     Speaking of covering up “There’s more to modesty than covering up.” This scene from Bringing Up Baby I think captures that. Hepburn was no tramp.. 

    • #6
  7. Cow Girl Thatcher
    Cow Girl
    @CowGirl

    Bathing suit standards are so relative. If you visit an Israeli beach, be prepared for no one to care at all about what you wear or if you’re topless, whatever age or gender you are. They don’t worry about what they’re wearing or not wearing…

    Once, in California, I attended a pool party sponsored at the home of one of my husband’s co-workers. We were in our twenties. Many of the other women were at least fifteen years older. I was also nearly eight months pregnant. Delighted by the chance to float in the water, thus relieving my enormous belly from the demands of gravity, I put on my bikini, covered it with an over-sized blue T-shirt, and got into the pool. I was the first adult to get into the water with those few children who were in attendance.  My husband tells me that right after I got in the pool, most of the other women changed into their suits and began swimming. He credits it to the fact that all of them must have felt like they’d look great in their suits with me floating like a whale.

    I’ve never cared any more how I looked in a suit after that day, because it’s all about the swimming.

    • #7
  8. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    The bikini did not destroy civilization. But soccer surely will :p

    • #8
  9. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Cow Girl: If you visit an Israeli beach, be prepared for no one to care at all about what you wear or if you’re topless…

    Well, other than the guys manning the rocket launchers a few miles away…

    • #9
  10. virgil15marlow@yahoo.com Coolidge
    virgil15marlow@yahoo.com
    @Manny

    I thought this was going to be just a “I’m-an-old-letch” type of post but it turned out to be interesting.  Modes of decency are generational.  I guess the bikini was shocking at one time.  But where do we go from here?  I find a string thing for a bathing suit to have gone beyond decency lines.  What’s next, pure nudity?  I hear people that advocate it.  Do we just say, hey it’s their generation and move on?  I personally see a trend line where the breakdown of decency mores causes the breakdown of the family which causes the breakdown of freedom.

    • #10
  11. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    I have to agree with Manny.  Bikinis are not detached from questions of moral breakdown.  Modesty is a value that promotes certain behaviors and discourages others, like promiscuity.  And let’s face it, aren’t there a lot of women wearing bikinis that you really wish wouldn’t?  Personally, being a woman of a certain age, I’m moving back toward the styles that Annette Kellerman rejected.  I can look pretty good in those.

    • #11
  12. douglaswatt25@yahoo.com Member
    douglaswatt25@yahoo.com
    @DougWatt

    “Does anybody remember the 60s? Entire families were torn apart over hair. Boys were thrown out on the street for growing hair on their faces, girls for letting it grow under their arms or on their legs. Each act was considered a sin against both nature and America.”

    Now some of them live in their parent’s basements except for one brief period when they went to Occupy Summer Camps which proves that all change is not necessarily progress.

    • #12
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