The Bikini

By Samantha Israel '09

The bikini a twentieth century female garment designed for swimming; however, it has a modern significance that goes far beyond its function. Wearing a bikini "is a speculation about image, for although the fact of swimwear is nothing more than textile...its image involves a decision and sense of adventure pertaining to place, body, and social values" (Martin and Koda 1990: 7). The bikini is a powerful garment in its ability to reflect a century of evolving female social standards and notions of appropriateness. In this paper I will discuss the evolution of the bikini and its role in American culture in order to highlight the inherently unique qualities of the bikini in relation to other popular American garments.

Despite the fact that nearly all aspects of female dress have evolved over the last century, the history of swimwear is distinctive. Swimwear is designed for the purpose of getting wet, and the "requirements of clothing for going into the water are unlike any other" (Warner 2006: 64). The majority of clothing is not functional for swimming because, for the most part, clothing is not intended to get wet. Most fabrics do not respond well to water, often take a long time to dry, and are uncomfortable on the body when wet. Technically, the most practical way for the body to enter the water is with no clothing at all (Warner 2006: 82). Therefore, swimwear reflects the interplay "between practicality and modesty" (2006: 82). The unpractical mixture of clothing and water has caused the history of garments designed for swimming to be fascinating. The "development of clothing for water activities over the past 150 years has been intimately connected to modesty standards for women, and hence, broadly speaking, to gender expectations and the mores of each subsequent generation" (2006: 83). Swimwear has gone from reflecting strict female social standards requiring garments that provide full coverage, to modern social standards that have both liberated women in regards to diminishing modesty in the public realm, and objectified women by promoting unrealistic body ideals....

One of the unique attributes of the bikini is that it is publicly acceptable attire despite the fact that women are nearly nude when wearing it. This seeming contradiction has had a host of effects in modern society. There is no other American garment that is as revealing while still remaining socially appropriate. At the same time, there are few other garments as directly tied to a particular type of space as the bikini. The bikini has evolved into acceptable beach attire, largely because it has been incorporated into the American beach fantasy. As noted above, the beach fantasy is always associated in the western world with a sense of escape and difference from everyday norms. It has come to be related with far away places that are unlike modern society. The appeal of the beach "is very much connected to the exoticized appeal of ‘other,' non-Western cultures. This connection is drawn in large part from...[a] general exoticism which often imputes wildness and sexual freedom to so-called primitive cultures" (Rutsky 1999: 19). This sense of exoticism and otherness has fostered attire meant to fit these associations. The bikini fits perfectly with the beach fantasy, because it has been perceived as the correct attire for a "primitive" activity.

Women in bikinis have come to be directly related to the beach fantasy. However, the fantasy is not limited to an unrealistic sense of perfection and beauty on the beach, but also requires unrealistic ideals for women. As this fantasy has come to be enacted in movies and magazines, a particularly defined image for what this "perfect woman" on the beach should look like has also been established. As a result, we see images of this woman everyday, but rarely do we meet her in person. She is on every page of our magazines, she plays the leading role with the perfect life in all of our favorite movies, and she is on every television show we watch. We now live in a society where the ideal is not the average; rather, it is quite the opposite. Women around the world idealize the "perfect woman," yet the majority of women are not genetically made to ever look or weigh the same as her.

The bikini is a garment that comes with a strict body standard, requiring an unrealistic perfection of form, skin tone and self-satisfaction. The bikini does not only dictate leisure and sun, it also dictates appearance, and any deviation from the requirements of perfect appearance does not look appropriate. The body size that has become socially ideal in the bikini is not realistic; indeed, the bikini does not cater to the natural form. Curves and body fat have come to be culturally distasteful in a bikini wearer, which has motivated women to shape their bodies with the goal of making them appropriate for a bikini. This has had a series of effects on women. For some, the rigors of the bikini have caused them to engage in extremely unhealthy diets and exercise regimes in order to force their bodies to conform to the ideal. For others, this has resulted in low self-esteem, because they feel their body is inadequate or unattractive if it does not fit the bikini standard.

What is ironic about what I am calling the bikini standard is that the bikini emerged as a garment linked to naturalness and a cultural sense of primitivism. However, the body appropriate for the bikini is far from natural. Not only are women meant to look unrealistically thin and "perfect," but also natural qualities of the body must actually be hidden when wearing a bikini. For instance, body hair in association with the bikini is socially unacceptable. If a woman displays body hair, then she no longer looks attractive while wearing her bikini. Additionally, skin blemishes must be hidden, as well as other naturally occurring body effects. A "young woman emerging from sleeves for the first time in the 1920s borrowed her father's razor to shave her underarms. Now there are creams and devices of astonishing array just to get the bikini line under control, and even to reduce hip and thigh cellulite, whatever that may be" (Warner 2006: 82). This is one more aspect of the harsher reality of the bikini. It began as a garment related to the social and sexual liberation of women, and has evolved into a form of attire that comes complete with social pressure and unrealistic ideals.

This relationship with the bikini and the idealized feminine body is clearly exhibited by its role in the ultimate test of beauty - the beauty pageant. The beauty pageant determines a winner based on contemporary cultural standards that determine beauty. The swimsuit competition is considered central to beauty pageants. Essentially, "the physical body of each contestant must closely approximate the current feminine ideal in order to remain competitive" (Banet-Weiser 1999: 86). The swimsuit is therefore used to judge how accurately contestants conform to standards of beauty. The bikini hides very little from full view, and thus contestants must adhere to a series of body qualifications to look effortlessly beautiful in it. The "sight of ten or twelve female bodies lined up to be judged and evaluated according to how closely they approximate this ideal provides a stunning illustration of the objectification and the resulting commodification of women's bodies" (Banet-Weiser 1999: 59). The bikini is therefore used as a tool to measure and to judge women who are in a competition based on their physical beauty-that is, how near they are to conforming to a culturally dictated notion of beauty-and this proves the degree to which the bikini has come to determine beauty aesthetics in our society....

The history of the bikini is complex and has been dominated by the social meaning that adheres to both the suit and the bodies that occupy it. The power and influence of the bikini is nearly unrelated to the actual fabric that makes up the garment, and more related to the lack of coverage afforded by the garment. The associations with and acceptance of the bikini have changed as standards of modesty in America have changed. Some say, "the social mores of America may be traced in the development of bathing suit styles-that they show the complete emancipation of women" (Warner 2006: 82). Yet, even as it has come to represent liberation, the bikini has also commoditized, and attempted to standardize, women's bodies.
Despite changes and variation in meaning and style, the bikini is, and will remain, a cultural statement. While it may have originated as a statement regarding leisure, freedom, and fun in the sun, it has now evolved into a statement pertaining to bodily perfection and control. As women opt for more coverage than offered by bikinis, in the form of tankinis or new "one-piece" suits, they are, perhaps, making a statement in response to the unrealistic ideals imposed by a half-century of the bikini. The bikini is therefore a unique garment in that it directly represents a period of evolving American social standards and the acceptable attitude and presentation of women in society. It continues to set the body standard by which many younger women live, in effect, even when they choose to wear something else to the beach.