Notes From My Journal
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?