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A bikini is a two-piece swimsuit primarily worn by women that features one piece on top that covers the breasts, and a second piece on the bottom: the front covering the pelvis but usually exposing the navel, and the back generally covering the intergluteal cleft and some or all of the buttocks. The size of the top and bottom can vary, from bikinis that offer full coverage of the breasts, pelvis, and buttocks, to more revealing designs with a thong or G-string bottom that covers only the mons pubis, but exposes the buttocks, and a top that covers only the areolae. Bikini bottoms covering about half the buttocks may be described as "Brazilian-cut".
The modern bikini swimsuit was introduced by French clothing designer Louis Réard in July 1946, and was named after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had taken place four days before.[2]
Due to its revealing design, the bikini was once considered controversial, facing opposition from a number of groups and being accepted only very slowly by the general public. In many countries, the design was banned from beaches and other public places: in 1949, France banned the bikini from being worn on its coastlines; Germany banned the bikini from public swimming pools until the 1970s, and some communist groups condemned the bikini as a "capitalist decadence".[3] The bikini also faced criticism from some feminists, who reviled it as a garment designed to suit men's tastes, and not those of women. Despite this backlash, however, the bikini still sold well throughout the mid to late 20th century.
The bikini gained increased exposure and acceptance as film stars like Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, and Ursula Andress wore it and were photographed on public beaches and seen in film.[3] The minimalist bikini design became common in most Western countries by the mid-1960s as both swimwear and underwear. By the late 20th century, it was widely used as sportswear in beach volleyball and bodybuilding. There are a number of modern stylistic variations of the design used for marketing purposes and as industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, skirtini, thong, and g-string. A man's single piece brief swimsuit may also be called a bikini or "bikini brief", particularly if it has slimmer sides.[4] Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear. The bikini has gradually gained wide acceptance in Western society. By the early 2000s, bikinis had become a US$811 million business annually, and boosted spin off services such as bikini waxing and sun tanning.[5]
While the two-piece swimsuit as a design existed in classical antiquity,[6] the modern design first attracted public notice in Paris on July 5, 1946.[7]
In May 1946, Parisian fashion designer Jacques Heim released a two-piece swimsuit design that he named the Atome ('Atom') and advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world".[8] Like swimsuits of the era, it covered the wearer's belly button, and it failed to attract much attention. French automotive engineer Louis Réard introduced a design he named the "Bikini", adopting the name from the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean,[9][10] which was the colonial name the Germans gave to the atoll, borrowed from the Marshallese name for the island, Pikinni.[11] Four days earlier, the United States had initiated its first peacetime nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads. Unlike the prior Trinity test, or most subsequent nuclear test series, the United States allowed both international observers and the global press to observe Crossroads, creating an intense international interest in the new weapon and its testing. Réard never explained why he chose the name "Bikini" for the swimsuit.[2] Various motivations have been attributed to his choosing of the name, including the idea that he hoped it would create "explosive commercial and cultural reaction" similar to the explosion at Bikini Atoll,[12][13] that it was meant to be associated with the "exotic allure of the tropical Pacific", from the "comparison of the effects of a scantily clad woman to the atomic bomb,"[2] and the idea that Reard's design had out-done Heim's design and "split the atome".[14] Réard's advertising slogan was that the Bikini was "smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world."[2] The swimsuit's name was typically capitalized for several years after its coining.[2]
It has been frequently cited as a major example of a "psychological link between atomic destruction and sexuality" in popular culture, which includes the stenciling of Rita Hayworth onto one of the bombs detonated at Crossroads,[2][15] and its persistence in language has been argued as having "trivialized and downplayed the reality of nuclear testing," given the contamination done by especially later US thermonuclear tests at Bikini and other Marshallese atolls.[16]
By making an analogy with words like bilingual and bilateral containing the Latin prefix "bi-" (meaning "two" in Latin), the word bikini was first back-derived as consisting of two parts, [bi + kini] by Rudi Gernreich, who introduced the monokini in 1964.[17][18] Later swimsuit designs like the tankini and trikini further cemented this derivation.[19] Over time the "–kini family" (as dubbed by author William Safire[20]), including the "–ini sisters" (as dubbed by designer Anne Cole[21]), expanded into a variety of swimwear including the monokini (also known as a numokini or unikini), seekini, tankini, camikini, hikini (also hipkini), minikini, face-kini, burkini, and microkini.[22] The Language Report, compiled by lexicographer Susie Dent and published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in 2003, considers lexicographic inventions like bandeaukini and camkini, two variants of the tankini, important to observe.[23] Although "bikini" was originally a registered trademark of Réard, it has since become genericized.[24]
Variations of the term are used to describe stylistic variations for promotional purposes and industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, bandeaukini and skirtini. A man's brief swimsuit may also be referred to as a bikini.[4] Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear.
According to archaeologist James Mellaart, a mural from the Chalcolithic era (around 5600 BC) in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia depicts a mother goddess astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a bikini.[6][25] The two-piece swimsuit can be traced back to the Greco-Roman world, where bikini-like garments worn by women athletes are depicted on urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC.[26]
In Coronation of the Winner, a mosaic in the floor of a Roman villa in Sicily that dates from the Diocletian period (286–305 AD), young women participate in weightlifting, discus throwing, and running ball games dressed in bikini-like garments (technically bandeaukinis in modern lexicon).[7][27] The mosaic, found in the Sicilian Villa Romana del Casale, features ten maidens who have been anachronistically dubbed the "Bikini Girls".[28][29] Other Roman archaeological finds depict the goddess Venus in a similar garment. In Pompeii, depictions of Venus wearing a bikini were discovered in the Casa della Venere,[30][31][32] in the tablinum of the House of Julia Felix,[33] and in an atrium garden of Via Dell'Abbondanza.[34]
Swimming or bathing outdoors was discouraged in the Christian West, so there was little demand or need for swimming or bathing costumes until the 18th century. The bathing gown of the 18th century was a loose ankle-length full-sleeve chemise-type gown made of wool or flannel that retained coverage and modesty.[35]
In 1907, Australian swimmer and performer Annette Kellermann was arrested on a Boston beach for wearing form-fitting sleeveless one-piece knitted swimming tights that covered her from neck to toe, a costume she adopted from England,[35] although it became accepted swimsuit attire for women in parts of Europe by 1910.[36] In 1913, designer Carl Jantzen made the first functional two-piece swimwear. Inspired by the introduction of females into Olympic swimming he designed a close-fitting costume with shorts for the bottom and short sleeves for the top.[37]
During the 1920s and 1930s, people began to shift from "taking in the water" to "taking in the sun", at bathhouses and spas, and swimsuit designs shifted from functional considerations to incorporate more decorative features. Rayon was used in the 1920s in the manufacture of tight-fitting swimsuits,[38] but durability issues, especially when wet, proved problematic.[39] Jersey and silk were also sometimes used.[40] By the 1930s, manufacturers had lowered necklines in the back, removed sleeves, and tightened the sides. With the development of new clothing materials, particularly latex and nylon, swimsuits gradually began hugging the body through the 1930s, with shoulder straps that could be lowered for tanning.[41]
Women's swimwear of the 1930s and 1940s incorporated increasing degrees of midriff exposure. The 1932 Hollywood film Three on a Match featured a midriff-baring two-piece bathing suit. Actress Dolores del Río was the first major star to wear a two-piece women's bathing suit onscreen in Flying Down to Rio (1933).[42]
Teen magazines of late 1940s and 1950s featured similar designs of midriff-baring suits and tops. However, midriff fashion was stated as only for beaches and informal events and considered indecent to be worn in public.[43] Hollywood endorsed the new glamor in films like 1949's Neptune's Daughter in which Esther Williams wore provocatively named costumes such as "Double Entendre" and "Honey Child".[44]
Wartime production during World War II required vast amounts of cotton, silk, nylon, wool, leather, and rubber. In 1942, the United States War Production Board issued Regulation L-85, cutting the use of natural fibers in clothing[45] and mandating a 10% reduction in the amount of fabric in women's beachwear.[46] To comply with the regulations, swimsuit manufacturers removed skirt panels and other attachments,[9] while increasing production of the two-piece swimsuit with bare midriffs.[47] At the same time, demand for all swimwear declined as there was not much interest in going to the beach, especially in Europe.[9]
In the summer of 1946, Western Europeans enjoyed their first war-free summer in many years. French designers sought to deliver fashions that matched the liberated mood of the people.[46] Fabric was still in short supply,[48] and in an endeavor to resurrect swimwear sales, two French designers – Jacques Heim and Louis Réard – almost simultaneously launched new two-piece swimsuit designs in 1946.[49][50] Heim launched a two-piece swimsuit design in Paris that he called the atome, after the smallest known particle of matter. He announced that it was the "world's smallest bathing suit."[46][51] Although briefer than the two-piece swimsuits of the 1930s, the bottom of Heim's new two-piece beach costume still covered the wearer's navel.[48][52][53][54]
Soon after, Louis Réard created a competing two-piece swimsuit design, which he called the bikini.[55] He noticed that women at the beach rolled up the edges of their swimsuit bottoms and tops to improve their tan.[56] On 5 July, Réard introduced his design at a swimsuit review held at a popular Paris public pool, Piscine Molitor, four days after the first test of a US nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll. The newspapers were full of news about it and Réard hoped for the same with his design.[57][58] Réard's bikini undercut Heim's atome in its brevity. His design consisted of two side-by-side triangles of fabric forming a bra, and two front-and-back triangular pieces of fabric covering the mons pubis and the buttocks, respectively, connected by string. When he was unable to find a fashion model willing to showcase his revealing design,[59] Réard hired Micheline Bernardini, an 18-year old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris.[60] He announced that his swimsuit, was "smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit".[61][62] Réard said that "like the [atom] bomb, the bikini is small and devastating".[63] Fashion writer Diana Vreeland described the bikini as the "atom bomb of fashion".[63] Bernardini received 50,000 fan letters, many of them from men.[9][37]
Photographs of Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The International Herald Tribune alone ran nine stories on the event.[64] French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, "People were craving the simple pleasures of the sea and the sun. For women, wearing a bikini signaled a kind of second liberation. There was really nothing sexual about this. It was instead a celebration of freedom and a return to the joys in life."[37]
Heim's atome was more in keeping with the sense of propriety of the 1940s, but Réard's design won the public's attention.[48] Although Heim's design was the first worn on the beach and initially sold more swimsuits, it was Réard's description of the two-piece swimsuit as a bikini that stuck.[7][65] As competing designs emerged, he declared in advertisements that a swimsuit could not be a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring."[9] Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey.[66]
As subsequent history would show, the bikini was more than a skimpy garment. It was a state of mind.
Lena Lenček[67]
Despite the garment's initial success in France, women worldwide continued to wear traditional one-piece swimsuits. When his sales stalled, Réard went back to designing and selling orthodox knickers.[68] In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole,[37] owner of mass market swimwear firm Cole of California, told Time that he had "little but scorn for France's famed Bikinis."[69] Réard himself would later describe it as a "two-piece bathing suit which reveals everything about a girl except for her mother's maiden name."[70] Fashion magazine Modern Girl Magazine in 1957 stated that "it is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing".[7][37]
In 1951, Eric Morley organized the Festival Bikini Contest, a beauty contest and swimwear advertising opportunity at that year's Festival of Britain. The press, welcoming the spectacle, referred to it as Miss World,[71][72] a name Morley registered as a trademark.[73] The winner was Kiki Håkansson of Sweden, who was crowned in a bikini. After the crowning, Håkansson was condemned by Pope Pius XII,[3][74][75] while Spain and Ireland threatened to withdraw from the pageant.[76] In 1952, bikinis were banne