When a Muslim woman was banned from a Paris pool for wearing a “burquini” last week—officials called the full-body wetsuit unhygienic—it got us thinking about beachwear brouhahas and swimsuit censorship throughout history.
1907
Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman, the first woman to attempt to swim the English Channel, was arrested for indecency in 1907, wearing a formfitting one-piece swimsuit on a Boston beach in 1907. “During this period, people were arrested on lots of different beaches when the local standards of modesty conflicted with the bathing-suit style,” says Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT. “In 1907, you’d be pretty covered up on the beach—you’d be wearing long bloomers and a tunic. Of course, it’s hard to swim in those, and Annette Kellerman was a really great swimmer, so no doubt she wore something a lot more formfitting.”
1934Hollywood’s Hays Code, introduced in 1930 and more effectively enforced in 1934, prohibited movie stars from showing navels on the silver screen, though midriffs were acceptable. (Stars of the ’30s and ’40s, like Ava Gardner, looked sexy nonetheless in high-waisted two-pieces.) “In the 1930s, the two-piece was above the belly button, with fairly structured material and a brassierelike top,” says Steele.
1951The modern bikini (seen here on model Micheline Bernadini) caused a sensation from the time it was introduced in 1946. At the first Miss World competition, in 1951, winner Kiki Hakannson of Sweden wore a skimpy bikini for her crowning ceremony. Countries such as Spain and Ireland threatened to withdraw from the event for religious reasons, and one-pieces became de rigueur for pageants during the next two decades.
1964In this year, designer Rudi Gernreich created the monokini—essentially a topless one-piece—which was considered shocking and denounced by the pope as immoral. Gernreich, a cofounder of the Mattachine Society, which was one of the first American gay rights groups, “was very much into body liberation and sexual liberation,” says Steele. There are quite a few monokinis in museum collections because even if people bought them, they didn’t have the nerve to wear them.”
2009
The burquini—a full-coverage swimsuit introduced in 2007 by Lebanese-Australian designer Aheda Zanetti—made headlines recently when it was deemed unhygienic by French officials and banned from a Paris pool. Michele Hlavsa, of Atlanta’s Centers for Disease Control, weighed in on whether the head-to-toe garment does indeed pose a health threat: “It depends on how the burquini is used,” she says. “If it’s worn like a regular swimsuit—you put it on when you get to the pool, and then you go home and change—it’s not really an issue. But if you’re wearing it as street clothes, it can become contaminated with sweat and whatever dirt your clothes would come in contact with during the course of the day, and I would be against using it in the pool.” She adds, “If the fit is too loose, it could also get caught on things and potentially create a drowning hazard.”
