After 57 years, the bikini is still attracting attention

By Catherine Fitzpatrick
Knight Ridder News Service

Want to make a splash at the beach this summer without doing a belly-flop? It's simple.

While it may be debatable whether bikinis have gotten better, they certainly haven't gotten bigger since the tiny suit was introduced in 1946. Associated Press photos

OK, it's not so simple.

The season's hottest two-piece swimsuits are as dinky as Shrinky Dinks. Bikini tops afford less coverage than two Tic-Tacs on a string. Bikini bottoms are composed primarily of the wearer's natural-born bottom.

A few quick calculations reveal these startling bikini facts: The average bikini is smaller than a restaurant napkin, daintier than a diaper and closer in size to a postage stamp than a Hallmark greeting card.

To appear in public so attired requires dauntless fortitude and a double dose of pluck. It presumes the wearer has doffed all but her last shred of modesty — or is 13 years old and a twig.

Regrettably, not every woman ready and willing to stuff a wild bikini is anatomically suited for it. Which is easily rectified by hewing closely to the following rule:

Pick a bikini that diverts the beholder's eye toward your assets and away from your excesses.

There's more to it than that, of course. But first, a brief history of the bikini.

French twist

In 1946, French automotive engineer Louis Reard was running his mother's lingerie business. Naturellement, he was dreaming of women in skimpy lingerie. Reard designed a garment so daring he knew it would stir the masses. But he lacked a name for his eye-popping swimsuit, and he lacked a woman willing to model it.

Writer Steve Rushin, whose paean to the tiny two-piece appeared in Sports Illustrated's 1997 swimsuit edition, picks up the story from there:

Four days before Reard was to show the world his new creation on a runway in Paris, the U.S. military exploded a nuclear bomb near several small islands in the Pacific. The islands were part of Bikini Atoll.

It was an epochal event, in more ways than one. It blew one heck of a hole in the Pacific. And Reard decided to name his atom-sized swimsuit after the test site.

The rest, as they say, is history.

On July 5, 1946, Reard unveiled his creation to the fashion world. No Parisian models would wear it on the runway, so he hired Micheline Bernardini, who had no qualms, seeing as her day job was a nude dancer at the Casino de Paris.

Actually, two-piece swimwear was not new. As part of wartime rationing, the U.S. government in 1943 ordered a 10 percent reduction in the fabric used in woman's swimwear. Off went the skirt panel and out came the bare midriff. At beaches across the country, men paid close attention to women doing their patriotic duty.

Bikini ban

Reard fanned the fantasy by declaring that a bikini couldn't be called a bikini unless it could be passed through a wedding ring. (Today's bikinis would sail through the eye of a needle. But perhaps you've noticed.)

Anyway, when Micheline pranced down that Paris runway, the world took note. The bikini was promptly banned in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Decency leagues pressured Hollywood to keep the garment out of the movies. One writer said a two-piece bathing suit reveals everything about a girl except her mother's maiden name.

Summers came and went. Bikinis stayed.

In 1956 Brigitte Bardot did wonders for the garment as a curvaceous Julie in the movie "And God Created Woman." Bardot was followed on celluloid sands by Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren, but still the bikini was considered scandalous. In 1957, Modern Girl magazine sniffed, "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."

American version

Raquel Welch and her fur bikini were featured prominently in the 1966 movie "One Million Years B.C." Associated Press library photo

Heart-throb Brian Hyland crooned the hit 1960 tune "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini." Three years later, "Beach Party" launched a series of flicks about women dancing in bikinis, starring Frankie Avalon and ex-Mouseketeer Annette Funicello.

In "Dr. No," the first James Bond film, bikini-clad Ursula Andress as Honey Rider emerged from the sea in a bikini accessorized with a hunting knife plunged into a sexy hip holster. Raquel Welch famously starred in "One Million Years B.C.," thus proving Stone Age cave women trotted around in fur bikinis and eye liner. Who woulda thunk it?

In 1964, swimsuit designer Rudi Geinreich went public with the monokini, a topless swimsuit, but it never really caught on.

Times and tastes change. Through the '80s and early '90s, bikini sales slid. Reard's company eventually folded.

But that's neither here nor there. Bikinis are in again, and few women can resist dreaming about being able to wear one, whether they are divas or dumplings.