Looking Out the Window…

I sit in my writing studio, which has a view to Vista del Mar, which means “View of the Sea.”

And indeed, I have a view of the sea and of this road that leads to and from it. Every so often, I lift my head from my keyboard to see people walking to and from the beach.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that many of the women walking by are wearing bikinis – just bikinis and flip-flops. In my day, those halcyon days of double standards, that was something no self-respecting woman would do. A bikini was made for swimming or tanning on the beach. And only on the beach. Once on a public sidewalk, some covering garment would be donned.

I look at these mostly young women walking by, and feel sort of… What? I think I feel appalled! And no, I don’t feel the same way about bare-chested men in board shorts. But I would be appalled by a man walking by in one of those… well, male bikinis. (There is a vulgar name for them. I can’t remember it right now.)

But what is it that upsets me? Is it the display of flesh? The decline in civilization it presages? Or is it my own septuagenarian crustiness?

I wondered: How long has the bikini been around?

According to one of the history blogs I subscribe to, the bikini was introduced on July 5, 1946, at a swimming pool in Paris, France:

Created by French designer Louis Réard, the string two-piece swimsuit – made from only 30 inches of fabric with a newspaper print pattern – was an expression of freedom, and controversial from the start. Though one newspaper declared it “four triangles of nothing,” Réard was undeterred. When he could not find an established model to wear it for the photo shoot, he hired an exotic dancer who had little issue showing off her belly button.

The name “bikini” has its own interesting story. As you might remember if you are my age, the 1940s was the beginning of the atomic age. Back then, beautiful women were sometimes referred to as “bombshells.”

Again, according to the same source:

Several days before the swimsuit reveal, the US had begun testing nuclear weapons near a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean called the Bikini Atoll. Being a master marketer, Réard named his new bathing outfit after this explosive state of affairs.

Now here’s something I read that’s hard to believe: Apparently, after the bikini’s debut, the Vatican declared it a sin. Not just the wearing of it. The bikini itself.

I don’t remember seeing many bikinis when I went to the beach with my family in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. But by the time I and my coevals were old enough to hitchhike down to Long Beach and gain entry by leaping over the boardwalk, bikinis were almost de rigueur. I never complained about it then.  I probably shouldn’t complain about it now.

I should remember what Réard said when he was asked about the bikini later in his life. He said he felt that he was “putting something good into a world” still reeling from World War II. “I wanted to design something that showed life can start over and be beautiful.”