NOW FIT MEANS FIT
TO BIKINI or not to bikini? That is the question, or at least it used to be. Decades ago it was a challenge to decency and so in some places in the world it remains. Or else there was shyness to overcome. In Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini, the 1960 hit pop song, the girl wearing a bikini for the first time didn’t want to come out of the locker room, wanted to hide under a blanket, then when she was in the sea she didn’t want to get out. She was not alone.
Today the curse of “body consciousness” has made it a horrible new challenge. A woman is supposed to spend months honing her “bikini body”, the absolute opposite of healthy carefree “let it all hang out” (literally).
Supermodel Cindy Crawford says: “I have cellulite. I admit it. But I say, ‘Screw it, I’m going to wear a bikini.’” But it’s all relative. She’s 50 now but she’s still Cindy Crawford.
The late Nora Ephron, fount of womanly wisdom, said: “Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off till you are 34.” Or 44 come to that. She was in New York not Newcastle but you get the idea.
We are talking about an item of key importance. It’s only a swimsuit but those two ever-tinier bits of fabric not only expose a lot of flesh, they tell the story of the last 70 years, its fashions, passions, tensions and taboos. Launched in July 1946, it was named “bikini” after the Pacific atoll where America was exploding nuclear devices.
WHEN the legendary New York fashion editor Diana Vreeland got her first sight of a bikini, on a girl in St Tropez, she declared it “the most important thing since the atom bomb”. The great tastemaker had made one of history’s tasteless remarks. It was only a year since Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been pulverised. But she may not have been wrong.
The two-piece bathing costume was nothing new. There is a 1941 picture of Ava Gardner, looking great of course. The top is quite modest and the bottom decorously conceals her navel and provides demure covering for the hips.
The Californian swimwear mogul Fred Cole was dismissive. He reckoned nothing to the bikini. It wouldn’t take off. He said it was just designed for French women to make their short legs look longer. In the beach prediction game King Canute did better. In 1960, decades before beach volleyball became an unmissable Olympic event, the US magazine Sports Illustrated launched its annual swimsuit issue, a midwinter relief from the diet of basketball and gridiron. Over the years the lavish “bombshell curves” have given way to athletic bodies. Gone are the days when Sophia Loren said of her magnificent bust and hips “this is all pasta”.
Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley were Sports Illustrated’s sort of women. Tiegs was the first woman to appear on the cover twice. In 2001 she was photographed bikini-clad for More magazine aged 54.
Pippa Middleton is the British nearly-a-princess-but-not-quite of the bikini body. A seriously accomplished sportswoman she wowed the world with her back at her sister’s wedding and impressed us with her front wearing a bikini in the West Indies. She is the antiKardashian – abs before booty!