Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

Bikinis are one of the most worn swimming outfits of today. You would even see celebrities in them when their lying on the beach! People would even wear them on the streets and in clubs, not to mention the fact that their plastered all over our newspapers and magazines…

However, this was most definitely not the case about sixty eight odd years ago. The idea of exposing your body in public didn’t even enter young girls’ minds in the 1940’s. Even in the rare cases when they did do it, they were very conservative. They even took great care in protecting their hair with bathing caps and never put their heads under water. They were even decorated with flowers to make them look a bit prettier!

The bikini was first introduced in 1949 and was shunned as too revealing. A lot of cultures didn’t agree with it and believed it was degrading towards woman in a whole. However once TV started becoming popular in the late 1960s and the early 1970s and films such as “And God Created Woman” and “Bikini Beach “came out, the girls’ bikini suddenly became very popular.

Gradually the young ladies picked up the courage to remove their dresses then hurriedly jumped into the sea. Once the young ladies became more comfortable (and that was when the young men were no longer whistling nor calling out curt remarks), they then went into wearing the two-piece. The top part covered almost completely and the bottom part was high enough to cover up to the nave. Also the bottom part was supplemented with frills, which provided additional covering. However, it wasn’t until the 1962 “Bond Girl” Ursula Andress appeared in a white bikini, walking out of the ocean, onto the beach, in Dr. No that sales hit their high point across the United States and earned the public acceptance overall. This universal acceptance was immediately noticed when Disney’s star, Annette Funicello, appeared opposite Frankie Avalon in Beach Party wearing a bikini.

Fashion history was shocked into the 20th century with some of the newer all revealing figure hugging swimsuits that revealed the body limbs more clearly than ever before  Liberated from long skirts, where young women of the twenties wore a figure hugging wool jersey sleeveless tank suit.

Today I think the only concern would be the hope that fashion does not allow us to take off too much from the bikinis.