Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
Speaker 2: that brings you the secret histories, little known fascinating facts
Speaker 2: and figures behind your favorite TV, movies, music, and more.
Speaker 2: And I think today, for only the second time, maybe
Speaker 2: after the Sonic episode, we are looking at a non
Speaker 2: movie music TV piece of pop culture, although it might
Speaker 2: have virtually any entry in those mediums, cannon beat for
Speaker 2: the sheer scope of its influence.
Speaker 3: That's right, folks, In honor of the official.
Speaker 2: Start of summer, we are talking about bikinis.
Speaker 3: Jordan. I feel like this point of.
Speaker 2: Those show is usually where we talk about our personal
Speaker 2: history with bikinis, and unless there's something I really don't
Speaker 2: know about you, we might be ad a little bit
Speaker 2: out of our depth here. I'm trying to keep this
Speaker 2: as little like leering and creepy as possible. I'm really
Speaker 2: cognitive off is like the old guy at the Nude
Speaker 2: beach here. So I will say though that the kind
Speaker 2: of fifties sixties like beach blanket bingo era of pop
Speaker 2: culture bikini influence is probably up your alley.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I really appreciate you adding a dose
Speaker 1: of kitchen into this episode. I'm really excited to get
Speaker 1: to the California myth and I'll keep my.
Speaker 3: Mic love references to a minimum, but.
Speaker 1: There will be Yeah, a lot, a lot of beach
Speaker 1: boys talking this episode that I'm excited about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right. This is the part of the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about our personal experience with a
Speaker 1: given topic. But in this case, you're right. Our experience
Speaker 1: is fairly limited, and mine's fairly limited outside of Frankie
Speaker 1: in Anette movies. But yeah, now that it's after Memorial Day,
Speaker 1: it's the unofficial start of summer, I thought this could
Speaker 1: be definitely a fun tangent to go down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm not particularly well versed in the
Speaker 2: history of fashion or anything, but I do remember having
Speaker 2: that Raquel Welch in One Million Year's BC poster burned
Speaker 2: into my skull like the hot Metal talisman gets burned
Speaker 2: into the Nazis hand in the first Dadiana Jones first
Speaker 2: time I.
Speaker 1: Saw a classic, Yeah, wait, where did you see this?
Speaker 2: I feel like Spencer's Gifts in the Capital City, in
Speaker 2: the Capital City Mall in camp Hill, Pa. Baby, So
Speaker 2: much of my formative experience was done like timidly venturing
Speaker 2: into the hot topic and Spencer's gifts, and just like
Speaker 2: surreptitiously taking notes on the stuff that I saw there
Speaker 2: that I thought was transgressive.
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is interesting because that so many
Speaker 1: of the things that I learned about as a kid
Speaker 1: were from like Old Time Life, nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: coffee table books, which is why I saw a poster
Speaker 1: for the first time too. I think this says a
Speaker 1: lot about.
Speaker 2: Each of us so folks, from the weird influence of
Speaker 2: the atomic bomb on this particular style of swimwear, to
Speaker 2: how backyard pool culture fueled the boom, to what Emily
Speaker 2: Post said about the bikini.
Speaker 3: Here's everything you didn't know about bikinis.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Starting off, the bikini is not actually the first two
Speaker 2: piece swimwear and design. Yes, while the Romans did a
Speaker 2: great many things in the buff, including swim there are
Speaker 2: murals that show Roman women wearing wood is basically a
Speaker 2: bikini like a rap style bandou bra and briefs. But
Speaker 2: they also have great, many artistic depictions of everybody being
Speaker 2: naked in bathhouses. Nudity was much less prohibited when you
Speaker 2: were playing around in the water for centuries because swimming
Speaker 2: was limited to people who lived there.
Speaker 3: You were not.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting point. I hadn't thought about. What
Speaker 1: did They have a lot of pools in major cities
Speaker 1: though too. But I guess if you're just in some
Speaker 1: kind of agricultural community, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You're not taking the oxen and cart and family down
Speaker 2: to the beach for a day because half of you would.
Speaker 1: Die down the shore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no down the shore in Rome. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's interesting that this prudishness around swimming is not part
Speaker 2: of ancient society because they have all of this rich
Speaker 2: mythology of like water related gods and nymphs and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth. So like you don't really see
Speaker 2: this prudishness around public bathing start to take root basically
Speaker 2: until the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are paintings in mosaics dating back to
Speaker 1: five thousand, six hundred BC in the ancient settlement of
Speaker 1: Ittalia Hook I'll just pretend that's the right way to
Speaker 1: say that it's in present day Turkey, and it shows
Speaker 1: their goddesses wearing two piece swimming style outfits and they're
Speaker 1: surviving Minoan paintings from sixteen hundred BC that show similar
Speaker 1: swimsuits that look like something out of a Frankie in
Speaker 1: a net movie.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's really strange how that style.
Speaker 1: It's something that you see in paintings and mosaics that
Speaker 1: are thousands of years old. And there's also an ancient
Speaker 1: Sicilian villa from roughly two hundred and fifty a d so,
Speaker 1: you know, almost two thousand years ago, which features a
Speaker 1: mosaic of women playing sports wearing what we're called subligar
Speaker 1: and strophium, which acted as bottom and top coverings respectively.
Speaker 2: So yes, this has quite the history, but it was
Speaker 2: the medieval period that really made a change here, probably
Speaker 2: due to the fact that this is the classic era
Speaker 2: of hand drawn maps with weird beasts on them that
Speaker 2: just said, here be monsters. So like, you know, if
Speaker 2: that's your mass media, you're probably a little bit scared
Speaker 2: off of deep water.
Speaker 1: It was also I think i'll result of the Black
Speaker 1: Plague too, that was bathing and swimming were thoughts to
Speaker 1: spread disease. So this was definitely a dark age not
Speaker 1: only for knowledge but for swimming attire because it wasn't
Speaker 1: really needed because people weren't swimming that much the real
Speaker 1: tragedy of the Dark Ages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this starts to change in the seventeen hundreds
Speaker 2: when it becomes considered healthy and beneficial to just kind
Speaker 2: of sort of submerge yourself in the oceans or hot springs.
Speaker 2: They didn't really have like a concept of swimming as
Speaker 2: like a dedicated healthy athletic activity. They were just like
Speaker 2: just go in it, sort of yeah, be in it,
Speaker 2: it'll be good for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the baths in Saratoga, there's the baths in Bath, England,
Speaker 1: the Minna. There are a lot of these these kind
Speaker 1: of health spas cropping up all over the world.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, you said you just sort of.
Speaker 1: Like taking what was the expression, taking the waters? Taking
Speaker 1: the waters?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And in fact it would take one of
Speaker 2: our nation's horniest founding fathers, Benson and Franklin, huge proponent
Speaker 2: of swimming and at one point contemplated setting up a
Speaker 2: school for it in London.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing because as you said, he was a randy
Speaker 1: old man who was rumored to have died of syphilis.
Speaker 2: But you know, the swimwear around this time, if you
Speaker 2: can even call it, that was just it's some of
Speaker 2: these photos are ridiculous. Makes me lament not for the
Speaker 2: first time that there isn't an audio or a visual
Speaker 2: component to this podcast, because these are hilarious. It's just
Speaker 2: like these huge shifts like moo moos, but they're made from.
Speaker 1: Like woola material I could imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they would weigh the hem downs to keep
Speaker 2: them from floating up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean they would stick actual like lead
Speaker 1: weights and sow them into the bottom. And as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: these swimming garments were heavy. I mean they weighed over
Speaker 1: twenty pounds and as a result, up until like the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, women traditionally swam and I say that in
Speaker 1: quotes by holding onto a rope attached to a buoy,
Speaker 1: because with their swim outfits were so heavy that they
Speaker 1: would just sink like a stone.
Speaker 2: There's this other thing called swimming machines that I thought
Speaker 2: were really interesting, which are these like they look like sheds,
Speaker 2: like suburban gardening sheds that you would keep the mower
Speaker 2: or the wheelbarro room. They're on wheels and they just
Speaker 2: roll them into the ocean and women go into them
Speaker 2: and kind of cavort around inside of them. Then they
Speaker 2: get wheeled back out of the ocean.
Speaker 3: Those were old.
Speaker 1: Those were invented by quankers in like the seventeen fifties,
Speaker 1: and they had this hole that you would jump through
Speaker 1: into the ocean. And they called this hole a modesty tunnel, which.
Speaker 3: Oh, modesty tunnel.
Speaker 2: That takes me back to my weekend in Acapulco, Hell,
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundred. It's big century for swimmers. You see
Speaker 2: railroads in the eighteen twenties, I believe, and other advances
Speaker 2: in personal transportation mean that people can now go down
Speaker 2: the shore or to the lake or what have you.
Speaker 2: It's just people are more mobile on a bit your scale.
Speaker 2: And then this is where you start to see the
Speaker 2: bloomer suits, which are the big puffy skirts over the
Speaker 2: big puffy pants. Again, just so much, so much fabric.
Speaker 1: How did people not drown in these?
Speaker 3: I know? It's really wild.
Speaker 2: Swimming in a parachute, yes, the parachute pants even it's
Speaker 2: like the EMC hammer pans. There were laws passed at
Speaker 2: the turn of the century that required all women in
Speaker 2: bathing suits to wear stockings, which was kind of a
Speaker 2: double blind because women were also not allowed to wear pants.
Speaker 2: But then around the turn of the nineteenth century, swimming
Speaker 2: becomes both an intercollegiate and Olympic sport, which kind of
Speaker 2: drives up its popularity, and a decade or so after that,
Speaker 2: there's this really interesting figure. She's an Australian swimmer named
Speaker 2: Annette Kellerman, and she created and successfully markets her own
Speaker 2: swimsuit that's based on kind of the what I would
Speaker 2: describe as the old timey wrestler like this Andre the
Speaker 2: giant singlet sort of thing that men were wearing, just
Speaker 2: like a tank top merged with shorts. I guess is
Speaker 2: that technically also a row I don't know.
Speaker 1: The version I saw had full sleeves that went down
Speaker 1: your wrists and leggings that went down to her feet.
Speaker 1: But because it was form fitting, she was arrested for
Speaker 1: wearing it on a Massachusetts beach in nineteen oh seven
Speaker 1: and charged with indecent exposure, despite the fact that she
Speaker 1: wasn't exposed outside of her hands and head, and this
Speaker 1: became a fairly high profile legal case at the time,
Speaker 1: which she ultimately won, setting the precedent for women's swimwear
Speaker 1: that actually lent itself to swimming and not just like
Speaker 1: trying not to sing.
Speaker 3: Swimming bags. Yeah. Yeah, Net Kellerman is such a fascinating person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she wore leg brace as a child when she
Speaker 2: was growing up in Australia, and she took up swimming
Speaker 2: to strengthen them. Became one of the first women to
Speaker 2: train swim the English Channel at the age of just nineteen,
Speaker 2: and she wrote a book about swimming. She helped popularize
Speaker 2: synchronized swimming as a sport. And she was even the
Speaker 2: first woman to appear nude in a Hollywood film, which
Speaker 2: is nineteen Sixteen's a Daughter of the Gods. She's got
Speaker 2: kind of the venus on the shell situation.
Speaker 1: This movie was reportedly the first million dollar film ever produced.
Speaker 1: But like so many early films, no copies are known
Speaker 1: to exist and it's now considered lost. Isn't there like
Speaker 1: a huge amount of those films that are lost. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it was between the film
Speaker 1: just degrading and just fires and stuff just straight up
Speaker 1: not being kept because people didn't really have much of
Speaker 1: an eye towards saving things for posterity at this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of his all Wikipedia entry un lost
Speaker 1: films of you know, historical significance, and that's a big one.
Speaker 3: Yeh. Bummer.
Speaker 2: But despite Net's efforts, women were still subject to weird
Speaker 2: laws around bathing suits. There are photos out there of
Speaker 2: actual swimsuit police going around on the beach with like
Speaker 2: a whistle and a badge and a ruler measuring the
Speaker 2: length of these women's suits to make sure that they
Speaker 2: were in order.
Speaker 1: But women were not the only ones subject to draconian,
Speaker 1: puritanical laws about swimwear. In most states, it was illegal
Speaker 1: for men to be topless until nineteen thirty seven, and
Speaker 1: lawmakers in Atlantic City hell out even longer, saying that
Speaker 1: they didn't want And this is a quote, gorillas on
Speaker 1: our beaches.
Speaker 2: That's got to be racist. I assume that's a deeply
Speaker 2: racist sentiment.
Speaker 1: It's offensive on multiple levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as with most things, we have Smut to thank
Speaker 2: for knocking down boundaries. Burlesque, which is I believe, one
Speaker 2: of like two native art forms that are actually native
Speaker 2: to the to the Americas.
Speaker 3: It's like jazz and the blues and burlesque.
Speaker 1: Really, I would have assumed that was like French Vaudeville.
Speaker 1: I could see being Oh, I guess that's musical, because yeah,
Speaker 1: Vaudeville has.
Speaker 2: Its roots of music hall. Burlesque I believe is a
Speaker 2: holy American invention, Jamie, can we get a fact check
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 1: Number one, of course, jazz and burlesque. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to assume that those are the two only American
Speaker 1: art forms exactly like you know, fast food. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes it's all scans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so burlesque, obviously they're in to some degree of nudity,
Speaker 2: but vaudeville performers too, like you know, Harry Houdini around
Speaker 2: this time was pretty frequently seen shirtless because he was
Speaker 2: submerged in water and heavy chains and all that. And
Speaker 2: then there's a nineteen twenty nine film Man with a
Speaker 2: movie camera that showed women topless and in two piece
Speaker 2: bathing suits that would expose their mid drifts.
Speaker 1: This isn't strictly about bikinis. But there's this great story
Speaker 1: about the New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, from whom you know,
Speaker 1: LaGuardia Airport takes its name, and there's a musical about him,
Speaker 1: very famous New York mayor. He supposedly, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is kind of apocryphal, jump started the development of the
Speaker 1: thong in nineteen thirty nine because the city was hosting
Speaker 1: the World's Fair at the time, and he wanted New
Speaker 1: York's dancers and striptease artists to be slightly more clothed.
Speaker 1: And the result of this sort of mayorial edict was
Speaker 1: to develop the thong good for LaGuardia.
Speaker 2: So moving into the nineteen thirties, there are a couple
Speaker 2: of things that happened. There are advances in fabric technology.
Speaker 2: We've got DuPont to think for that. I believe who
Speaker 2: invented nylon palm.
Speaker 1: That might have been dal, that might have been Dow.
Speaker 2: Actually, the two sides of American culture nudity and horrific violence.
Speaker 2: So you basically stop making bathing suits out of like
Speaker 2: heavy flannel and cotton and then all this other stuff,
Speaker 2: and two men stop covering up their chests while they're
Speaker 2: swimming or competing in sports, which helps us normalize increasing
Speaker 2: levels of nudity on the national stage. It's interesting because
Speaker 2: the other big development that happens around this time, and
Speaker 2: I see Coco Chanell's name attached to this, is making
Speaker 2: tans fashionable. You know, previously, the reason that you have
Speaker 2: all of these alabaster women and portrayals of antiquity was
Speaker 2: because if you had tanem and you were outside laboring
Speaker 2: like a disgusting peasant.
Speaker 3: And therefore if you were pure.
Speaker 2: White as the driven snow, it meant you were inside
Speaker 2: at all times, and therefore of a higher financial cast.
Speaker 2: And that's even why people would powder their face and
Speaker 2: powder their wigs, trying to look as pale and as
Speaker 2: untouched by the sun as possible. But that starts to change.
Speaker 2: And so one of the ways in which you showed
Speaker 2: that you had money now was by traveling and by
Speaker 2: going on holiday. And this is where we get the
Speaker 2: backless swimsuit, because the backless swimsuit exposed an even greater
Speaker 2: swath of your you know, tanned, tanned skin, and so
Speaker 2: that's one of the first shots across the bow of
Speaker 2: increased swimsuit skimpiness. And so in nineteen thirty two you
Speaker 2: have a French designer named Madeleine Vione who designed evening
Speaker 2: gown with an exposed mid drift. And obviously we owe
Speaker 2: a huge debt to Busby Berkeley.
Speaker 3: And those films.
Speaker 2: The nineteen thirty two One Foot Light Parade showed bikinis,
Speaker 2: as did Dorothy Lemore's The Hurricane in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 2: But this is all pre Hayze code so Jordan talked
Speaker 2: to us a little bit about the Haze Code, and
Speaker 2: the Hayes Code was put.
Speaker 1: In place, I believe in the late or mid thirties
Speaker 1: to the mid fifties, and it was kind of like
Speaker 1: the Ten Commandments of filmmaking, like things that you were
Speaker 1: not allowed to show, and they were very strict and
Speaker 1: usually pretty ridiculous. I mean, I don't think this is
Speaker 1: strictly tied to the Hayes Code, but the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where like on I Love Lucy, where Ricky and
Speaker 1: Lucy were shown in separate beds and they weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to say like pregnant and had to say expecting and
Speaker 1: things like that. Things were very puritanical, rigid code of
Speaker 1: what you could and could not show in a film.
Speaker 1: But prior to this Hayes Code, movies from the twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties are actually in a lot of cases it's
Speaker 1: surprisingly very liberal in terms of their you know, what
Speaker 1: they showed in terms of sex and fashion and language.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: The actress Dolores del Rio holds the title the first
Speaker 1: major star to wear a two piece swimsuit on screen,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirty three film Flying Down to Rio.
Speaker 2: Chorus girls also chorus girls at the time are obviously
Speaker 2: sort of exempt from this rule their fashionedd bikini style outfits.
Speaker 2: But the whole thing is like navels, right, like you
Speaker 2: have to cover navels. That's the Barbara Eden thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the thing I guess, as you said,
Speaker 1: into the sixties with Barbariden and Idri of Genie. I
Speaker 1: think Share was like the first. I think she might
Speaker 1: have been the first person on network TV to do that.
Speaker 3: I kind of love her. God bless her. She's broken
Speaker 3: down so many barriers Share she really truly has.
Speaker 2: So there's an American designer named Claire mccardal who brings
Speaker 2: out a side cut bathing suit in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2: You know, we're getting the back list, we're getting the
Speaker 2: sides cut out, so we're edging closer towards the bikini.
Speaker 2: And that's in nineteen thirty five. As I said, and Jordan,
Speaker 2: you have an interesting fact here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is just something really pretty hilarious that I
Speaker 1: came across a few months before the bikini was unveiled.
Speaker 3: In nineteen forty six, there was.
Speaker 1: Something called the Midnight Booie and this was advertised in
Speaker 1: like Life magazine and Vogue, And it was manufactured by
Speaker 1: the Duchess Royal Company. And it was a two piece
Speaker 1: suit with a cork buckle attached across the bottom and
Speaker 1: if the wearer wanted to remove it while swimming, they
Speaker 1: could tie the top to the buckle and allow both
Speaker 1: parts to float while you splashed around swimming in the buff.
Speaker 1: And it was advertised in a December nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: issue of Vogue. And the fact that it was advertising
Speaker 1: Life magazine is pretty crazy to me because that's such
Speaker 1: a mainstream publication. But the ad featured this priceless copy.
Speaker 1: There's google it, you can see it. The name of
Speaker 1: the suit. Of course, the Midnight booy suggests the nocturnal
Speaker 1: conditions under which nude swimming is most agreeable. So that
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I'm filling a need in a market
Speaker 1: there with some impressive.
Speaker 3: I want to hear the radio ads for it where
Speaker 3: they're like the Midnight Booie.
Speaker 2: For all your nudebathing needs.
Speaker 1: How often has this happened to you? Oh boy, We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but we'll be right
Speaker 1: back with more too much information In just.
Speaker 2: A moment, Jordan wrote this header. I have to get
Speaker 2: shout it out for him. The atomic bomb entered. The
Speaker 2: atomic bomb and the Frenchman one of Asop's less popular fables.
Speaker 2: So the important thing about all of these bikini precursors
Speaker 2: and all of these different, you know, burlesque outfits and
Speaker 2: all this stuff, is that they were usually pretty high cut.
Speaker 2: They concealed the belly button. More of the butt is
Speaker 2: actually concealed by them. We're not edging into g string territory.
Speaker 2: But World War II curbs the production of fabrics across
Speaker 2: the board, and because it was needed, among other things,
Speaker 2: to make uniforms for the sick millions of men and
Speaker 2: women who were serving sixteen million. And in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: the United States War Production Board issues Regulation L eighty five,
Speaker 2: which cuts the use of natural fibers and clothing and
Speaker 2: mandates a ten percent reduction in the amount of fat
Speaker 2: in women's beach where So the government literally comes in
Speaker 2: and says, your bathing suits have to be skinny, Johnny,
Speaker 2: make the bathing suit skimpia. It's gonna help us win
Speaker 2: the wall twenty three Scando. Then, of course, we dropped
Speaker 2: the atomic bomb a humanitarian moment, not a humanitarian moment,
Speaker 2: a low point in humanity, I should say, Jordan, take
Speaker 2: us into the Frenchman.
Speaker 1: Yes, this brings us to my favorite part of this episode,
Speaker 1: which is the arms race, really the only kind of
Speaker 1: arms race I can get behind, between two Frenchmen to
Speaker 1: create the smallest, most scandalous swimsuit the world has ever known.
Speaker 1: A very noble pursuit, especially coming after I'll just talk
Speaker 1: about the atom bomb. There was a Frenchman named Jacques
Speaker 1: Heim who was apparently an active member of the French
Speaker 1: resistance during World War Two, and he created a two
Speaker 1: piece design that he called the Atom but it failed
Speaker 1: to catch on. But the atom is a great name
Speaker 1: for a small swimsuit because at the time that was
Speaker 1: the smallest unit of matter then known to exist. Tiny suit,
Speaker 1: tiny particle. Very clever. I just want to savor that
Speaker 1: before we start talking about bombing tropical island Paradise Is
Speaker 1: into glassy craters. I just think I think that's cute, Adam.
Speaker 1: I think it's a much more clever name than the bikini.
Speaker 1: Oh shots fire.
Speaker 2: So your team Heim, Yeah, technically he's the originator, so yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean both these guys really knew the promo
Speaker 1: game and this guy, Jacquesheim, he hired a skywriter to
Speaker 1: write the World's Smallest bathing suit is now available above
Speaker 1: a very popular Mediterranean resort. So this guy was not
Speaker 1: messing around. Well, should we talk about the design.
Speaker 2: It's I think it probably kind of looked like the
Speaker 2: one Rachel McAdams is wearing. The notebook had like a
Speaker 2: rough old top, but the bottom of it was still
Speaker 2: high cut covered. The nabel covered most of the butt.
Speaker 2: Still too risque for women though, does not catch on.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this guy, Jacques Heim, he was upstaged a
Speaker 1: short time later. I think it was within the same
Speaker 1: year by another Frenchman, Louis Rayard, and he's the man
Speaker 1: that we now credit as the inventor of the bikini.
Speaker 1: And Riyard was an automotive engineer who helped run his
Speaker 1: mother's lingerie shop, which I think sounds a little awkward.
Speaker 3: But moving on.
Speaker 2: They're French, they have more enlightened attitudes about this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff than we do.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: I just think it's interesting to note the ties between
Speaker 1: engineers and those who make women's under garments. Howard Hughes,
Speaker 1: the legendary.
Speaker 2: Eccentric billionaire and saying legendary guy with jars of urin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He got his start in engineering. I mean, as
Speaker 1: everyone who saw The Aviator knows, he designed planes. But
Speaker 1: by the thirties and forties he had moved into producing
Speaker 1: films and he was unhappy with the footage that he
Speaker 1: was seeing from a movie he was making with Jane
Speaker 1: Russell called The Outlaw in nineteen forty five nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: and he was specifically unhappy with her i'll say, appearance.
Speaker 1: So he put on his engineering hat and he designed
Speaker 1: a cantilevered bral for his start aware and apparently he
Speaker 1: was better at designing planes than he was designing underwear,
Speaker 1: because Jane Russell described his entraption as quote uncomfortable and ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Believe me, this man could design planes, but a mister
Speaker 1: playtext he wasn't, which is an incredible SoundBite from her.
Speaker 1: But forty spurn Yes. Anyway, back to the swimsuit arms race,
Speaker 1: Rayard was inspired when he noticed sunbathers on the Saint
Speaker 1: Tropez Beach roll up the edges of their swimsuits to achieve, you.
Speaker 3: Know, a more full tan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he basically won up at Tim by
Speaker 2: making the design even skimpier basically created it was a
Speaker 2: string bikini. He connected all of the essential pieces of
Speaker 2: fabric with string and christened his creation the Bikini after
Speaker 2: the Bikini Atoll, where the atomic bomb testing had taken
Speaker 2: place just days earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the term bombshell was already in the popular lexicon,
Speaker 1: so Riyard hoped that his creation would shock people in
Speaker 1: the same way that the a bomb did, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm really curious to see what a marketing expert would
Speaker 1: say about linking the atomic bomb and an item of
Speaker 1: vacation apparel.
Speaker 3: But uh, I mean, but.
Speaker 1: Go with god, sex and death the two things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what American Yeah.
Speaker 2: Debuting on July fifth, nineteen forty six, Rayard's design used
Speaker 2: only thirty inches of fabric and exposed not just the
Speaker 2: navel but much of the dairy air with the g
Speaker 2: string style design, and consequently, he could not find a
Speaker 2: model daring enough to wear it in public for the
Speaker 2: big reveal, so he used a nineteen year old exotic dancer,
Speaker 2: Michelle Bernardini as the very first model.
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 1: She supposedly received fifty thousand letters after modeling it at
Speaker 1: a Parisian pool, and she's still alive. She turned ninety
Speaker 1: four in December and lives in Australia, and she restaged
Speaker 1: the famous bikini premiere photo forty years after the original
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six, when she was fifty eight years old.
Speaker 2: Hell Yes, Rayard if nothing else, had an instinct for flair.
Speaker 2: He patterned one of the versions Bernardini would wear in newsprint,
Speaker 2: just sort of already winking at the rush of press
Speaker 2: coverage thing was going to get and I love how
Speaker 2: horrible these people are to each other. He marketed his
Speaker 2: version as smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit in
Speaker 2: kind of a direct shot across the bow to his competitor,
Speaker 2: and declared that for a design to be considered an
Speaker 2: authentic bikini, it must be so small and had to
Speaker 2: use so little fabric that it could be pulled through
Speaker 2: a wedding ring, which is an indelible bit of Pte
Speaker 2: Barnam esque humbug.
Speaker 1: You know that's quite a metaphor not just any ring,
Speaker 1: a wedding ring.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bernardini was seen holding up a match box in the
Speaker 1: first photos of her in the suit to indicate that
Speaker 1: the bikini was so small that it could fit inside
Speaker 1: of a matchbox. And as you said, discover Yard really
Speaker 1: had a gift for showmanship, and as a promo gimmick,
Speaker 1: he commissioned the car body specialist to turn his car
Speaker 1: into a road yacht. They turned the whole body of
Speaker 1: the car into this mock luxury cabin cruiser with a
Speaker 1: ca portholes, an anchor, a signal mass and other nautical regalia. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you know, an amphibious vehicle, so it couldn't
Speaker 1: go in water. But the car went on advertising parades
Speaker 1: with a crew of bikini clad women, which caused a splash.
Speaker 1: As it were, I mean, this is basically like the
Speaker 1: what was that the Budweiser at like the Swedish bikini
Speaker 1: team or something.
Speaker 2: It was like that like fifty years early. Yes, needless
Speaker 2: to say, it caused a stir. The International Herald Tribune
Speaker 2: ran nine separate articles on the unveiling event alone. Spain, Italy, Australia, Portugal,
Speaker 2: France all banned it for a time, and they were
Speaker 2: prohibited in German public swimming pools until the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Wow, I love how offended Germany was by this. There
Speaker 1: was a women's magazine in Germany called the modern girl,
Speaker 1: and they wrote it is unthinkable that a decent girl
Speaker 1: with tact would ever wear.
Speaker 3: Such a thing.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen fifty, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole,
Speaker 2: the owner of mass market swimmer firm Coal of California,
Speaker 2: told Time that he had little but scorn for France's
Speaker 2: famed bikinis. I imagine that doing the Orson Wells Voice.
Speaker 2: I have little bit scorn for these so cold French bikinis.
Speaker 2: Cold California.
Speaker 3: It's work in progress.
Speaker 2: Coal of California also famous for being Catherine Colson, the
Speaker 2: log lady from Twin Peaks. Her aunt, Margaret Feligi, is
Speaker 2: a longtime designer for Coal of California. So eraser Head
Speaker 2: was partially funded by profits from Coal of California. So
Speaker 2: if you want to draw this connection, there's a connection
Speaker 2: between the popularity of bikinis and eraser Head. So that's
Speaker 2: pretty America, you know, David lynch Man, that's America, all right.
Speaker 2: Keep going with these bikini quotes that we can maybe
Speaker 2: read in Orson Wells Voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, my favorite pearl clutching quote about bikinis
Speaker 1: is from the actress and swimmer esther Williams, who compiented
Speaker 1: that this is beautiful. A bikini is a thoughtless act period.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible. And the really insane thing to me
Speaker 1: is that there are still places in the world where
Speaker 1: bikinis are banned. There is a city in Croatia where
Speaker 1: you can be fined for walking the streets in a swimsuit,
Speaker 1: in the Maldives where most public beaches are restricted to
Speaker 1: one pieces, and there's a city in the UAE where
Speaker 1: swimwear is banned entirely. And this is even true in
Speaker 1: places in the good old US of A. In nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: the state of Florida banned thong bikinis from its state beaches,
Speaker 1: and in January two thousand and five, the city of Melbourne, Florida,
Speaker 1: followed suit. If you're caught wearing a thong in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: you will owe five hundred dollars in fines and possibly
Speaker 1: sixty days in prison, though I wonder how strictly this
Speaker 1: rule is enforced on the On the flip side, there's
Speaker 1: a beach in Egypt called La Femme which prohibits men
Speaker 1: and cameras, so Muslim women can sunbathe without Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was actually very recent that was. I
Speaker 1: think it's actually a private beach that was opened I
Speaker 1: want to sell me definitely in the two thousands, possibly
Speaker 1: hold twenty tens.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Umm, and the Catholic Church really had it in for
Speaker 2: bikinis at one point. The Vatican newspaper and this is
Speaker 2: coming from a book called Bikini Story by an author
Speaker 2: named Patrick alac So. I'm taking him at his word
Speaker 2: for this, but this sounds made up. There is a
Speaker 2: newspaper in the Vatican, the osservatori Romano, who wrote that
Speaker 2: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were alive and well
Speaker 2: and had taken the form of the bikini.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that papal thing. It reminds me that
Speaker 1: Lady Bruce quote, if your body's dirty, the fault.
Speaker 3: Lies with the manufacturer.
Speaker 1: So it's funny to me that the Vatican has its
Speaker 1: problem with the human form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not like anything else was happening in the priesthood
Speaker 2: throughout the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Umm.
Speaker 2: And apparently at one point I was not able. This
Speaker 2: is also from Alex book. I just wanted to put
Speaker 2: this in here. It's hilarious. I wasn't able to find
Speaker 2: out which communist group, but Apparently some communist group decried
Speaker 2: bikinis as capitally decadence, and so a world turned its
Speaker 2: horny eyes to America and the topic of this heading.
Speaker 2: The heading that I used for this in the outlined
Speaker 2: was pools rush in where angels fear to tread. But
Speaker 2: because America is a terrible place soaked in the blood
Speaker 2: of the innocent, it's impossible to discuss the rise of
Speaker 2: the bikini without the rise of.
Speaker 3: The private pool.
Speaker 2: So white America's spending power and wealth was at its
Speaker 2: concentrated peak following World War Two, because you have veterans
Speaker 2: coming home on the GI Bill, able to enroll in college,
Speaker 2: pick up higher paying jobs. And labor unions are at
Speaker 2: their historical strongest in America, the strongest there to be.
Speaker 2: This is the era of HOFA. This is the air
Speaker 2: before you know what. Thirty years later Reagan comes in
Speaker 2: and busts up the Air Controllers Union. Anyway, labor unions
Speaker 2: are at their strongest peak. So money is good. There
Speaker 2: are lots of jobs to go around because the industrial economy,
Speaker 2: with cars all that good stuff, there's more money floating
Speaker 2: around in the same people that have always had money, but.
Speaker 1: All the infrastructure is put in place to basically make
Speaker 1: the war effort happen with building planes and you know,
Speaker 1: munitions and stuff. It's basically turn on a dime and
Speaker 1: turn into making consumer goods cars like you mentioned, and
Speaker 1: appliances and things like that.
Speaker 2: And it's important to note that public pools had actually
Speaker 2: been a big part of American urban culture until now,
Speaker 2: and they weren't I don't want to say they weren't
Speaker 2: even but they were actually desegregated until nineteen twenty.
Speaker 3: Especially in the North.
Speaker 2: You saw these big public pools where black people and
Speaker 2: white people were swimming together. But around nineteen twenty you
Speaker 2: start having all these morality scares and so they become segregated.
Speaker 2: And that's what you see all these really heartrending pictures
Speaker 2: of the you know, the Jim Crow era, of all
Speaker 2: these white kids playing in pools and all these little
Speaker 2: black kids up against the fence looking in brown versus
Speaker 2: the Board of Education heavy air quotes officially end segregation
Speaker 2: in schools and fifty four and pools are not exempt
Speaker 2: from the struggles that are around that. Three years later,
Speaker 2: in Marshall, Texas, there's an NAACP backed lawsuit where a
Speaker 2: man was suing to try and integrate a brand new
Speaker 2: swimming pool, and the judge admirably ruled in his favor,
Speaker 2: at which point the citizens of Marshall voted seventeen hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty eight to eighty nine to have the city
Speaker 2: sell off the entirety of their recreational facilities rather than
Speaker 2: integrate them. Let's burn it to the ground. Though they
Speaker 2: didn't burn it to the ground. It went into private hands,
Speaker 2: but they literally said let's sell everything rather than integrate it.
Speaker 2: So the pool went to a local Lions club, which
Speaker 2: subsequently and predictably opened it up as a white's only
Speaker 2: private facility.
Speaker 3: This country is garbage.
Speaker 2: So by the mid fifties, what you get is a
Speaker 2: lot of newly cash flush and mobile because cars mobile,
Speaker 2: white families fleeing from urban centers. The Federal Aid Highway
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen fifty six low cost mortgages to the
Speaker 2: GI bill, and redlining, the racist practice of redlining, whereby
Speaker 2: you know, certain areas were circled in red on federally
Speaker 2: and internationally distributed maps that meant it was more desirable
Speaker 2: to loan to people here and basically ensured that black
Speaker 2: people couldn't get loans for homes. So that's how you
Speaker 2: get the suburbs. People are fleeing urban centers. They're terrified
Speaker 2: of segregation, they're spreading out. There's all this new housing
Speaker 2: being built up. And then we get the rise of
Speaker 2: the backyard pool culture. Think of your swinging cocktail parties,
Speaker 2: you know, your John cheever on, we of the suburbs type,
Speaker 2: mixing a picture of Martini's and beating your kids with
Speaker 2: a belt and putting on some bing Crosby and.
Speaker 3: Beating your kid with a barbecue di spatch, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if you beat your kid with a saca
Speaker 2: sweet Valencia oranges, it won't make a bruise. I think
Speaker 2: that's a family guy joke. So I don't know how
Speaker 2: much of a joke it actually was, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So this is all you have to keep this in
Speaker 2: mind that there's the better technology, better construction, and cheaper materials.
Speaker 2: So from nineteen fifty to two thousand, the number of
Speaker 2: private pools in the US goes from twenty five hundred
Speaker 2: to more than four million.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: This historian named Jeff Wiltsee writ in a two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven book called Contested Waters, A Social History of
Speaker 2: swimming Pools in America. All of this is to say
Speaker 2: that you no longer have to bear your body at
Speaker 2: a beach, lake or pond. Now you can do it
Speaker 2: in your own backyard. And then the boob tube and
Speaker 2: the boob screen and the boob page and the.
Speaker 3: Boob radio hedge.
Speaker 2: The French continue their campaign of horninas on the big
Speaker 2: screen in the nineteen fifties. One of the big ground
Speaker 2: zeros of the bikini on screen is in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two when a seventeen year old Brigitte Bordeaux stars in
Speaker 2: the French film Manina the Girl in the Bikini. Little
Speaker 2: on the nose there, folks, but that's fine. And then
Speaker 2: there's famous pictures of her apperion it Can the following
Speaker 2: year in a Flora bikini, and then in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six she appears in bikini again in the film and
Speaker 2: God Created Women Woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This really went a long way into giving the bikini
Speaker 1: sort of an air of sophistication and class and not
Speaker 1: something that you know, burlesque.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then you start seeing the class of Hollywood pin
Speaker 2: ups like a Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor,
Speaker 2: Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable. You start seeing them in bikinis
Speaker 2: in promo shots.
Speaker 1: And in the early sixties Emily Post the matron of manners.
Speaker 3: Who what I mean?
Speaker 1: Did she write books or have of a newspaper column.
Speaker 1: I can't remember which, but I mean she was famously
Speaker 1: like she was the person you looked to when you
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like you know, how to set a
Speaker 1: table properly, and how to you know all these really
Speaker 1: specific rules.
Speaker 3: Of social decorum. She was like the queen of that.
Speaker 3: I hate this era of American Oh my god, the
Speaker 3: good thing it's it's awful. I mean, it's horrifying.
Speaker 1: She declared the bikini for perfect figures only and only
Speaker 1: for the very but.
Speaker 2: The rise of the Bikini was truly a full court
Speaker 2: cross medium press. By nineteen sixty, Brian Hyland hits the charts,
Speaker 2: hits number one with a bullet with one of my
Speaker 2: least favorite songs of all time, a song I truly
Speaker 2: detest with every single vibrating atom of my being. The
Speaker 2: itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot Bikini hits number
Speaker 2: one on Billboard, although not the first version. A Swedish
Speaker 2: artist named Lil Bobs Sure cut the first version in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six. Jordan, what do you have to say
Speaker 2: about this song? I have nothing but terrible things to
Speaker 2: say about the song. I can't believe that hit number one.
Speaker 2: I mean, this isn't like the real novelty song era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was Hello Mother, Hello Fodder Camp Grenada came
Speaker 1: out around now.
Speaker 3: I feel like, yeah, this is a low.
Speaker 1: Ebb before the Beatles came and rescued us all from
Speaker 1: novelty numbers. Ah.
Speaker 2: There it is nineteen sixty two, Big year for the bikini.
Speaker 2: Playboy first features a bikini on its cover in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two, and also to the big screen. Ursula Andres
Speaker 2: strolls out of the ocean and into immortality when she
Speaker 2: appears as the first bond Girl honey Rider in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty Two's Doctor No in that white bikini. It's a
Speaker 2: belted white bikini. She's got the skin diver's knife on it.
Speaker 2: Subsequently becomes known as the Doctor No bikini. And Andres
Speaker 2: she has better feelings about this than Raquel Welch. I'll say,
Speaker 2: and just said that she owed her career to that
Speaker 2: white bikini. And she remarked this bikini has made me
Speaker 2: into a success. As a result of starring in Doctor
Speaker 2: No as the first bond girl, I was given the
Speaker 2: freedom to take my pick of future roles and to
Speaker 2: become financially independent, which bravo. It's sold for a ritzy
Speaker 2: sixty thousand dollars at a Christie's auction in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one. Also in nineteen sixty two, we have Sue
Speaker 2: lyons we're in a bikini in Lolita, but we are
Speaker 2: not going to go there. The other thing that's important
Speaker 2: to keep in mind in this time in American culture
Speaker 2: is that the big development in mid century American life
Speaker 2: is the rise of the teen Before industrialization and sort
Speaker 2: of concentrated urban living and jobs and factories and all this,
Speaker 2: the concept of being a teenager was not It did
Speaker 2: not really exist. As soon as you were old enough
Speaker 2: to help work on the farm or help work out
Speaker 2: the business, that's what you did, and then you got married,
Speaker 2: begat more laborers, and then you died from brucellosis at
Speaker 2: the age of forty, as God intended. So there's no
Speaker 2: there was no this notion of this transitory phase where
Speaker 2: you're not quite a kid, but you're not quite an adult.
Speaker 2: Not really as much of a thing, but changing societal mores,
Speaker 2: including you know, educational laws that keep kids in school longer,
Speaker 2: increased cash trickling down to them. You know, parents are
Speaker 2: cash flush, so kids get an allowance, so they get
Speaker 2: spending power, which of course is political power in the country.
Speaker 3: So there are all of a sudden the market force.
Speaker 2: So not only teenagers are a sudden distinct demographic, but
Speaker 2: now there's money to be made in catering to them.
Speaker 2: And I know this is a bit more of a
Speaker 2: point of expertise for you than it is me. So Jordan,
Speaker 2: take it away that there.
Speaker 1: Are artists that were traditionally seen as for young people
Speaker 1: dating back. I mean, I'm sure to you know, the
Speaker 1: beginning of time, but I mean you got your your
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra's and the Bobby Soxxers, and the fortieses a
Speaker 1: big band artists like Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller and
Speaker 1: Benny Goodman, all those kinds of people. But here, really
Speaker 1: in the late fifties and early sixties, you have the
Speaker 1: rise of sort of the teen idols. You have shows
Speaker 1: like American Bandstand and this whole rush of teen movies. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we mentioned this at the top of the episode, the
Speaker 1: sort of the whole beach Party phenomenon, starring specifically Frankie Avalon,
Speaker 1: who was a singer at the time. He had a
Speaker 1: big hit in I think nineteen sixty or sixty one
Speaker 1: with Venus and a net Funicello and a net Funicelle.
Speaker 3: Is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Because she was she was in Disney's Mickey Mouse Club,
Speaker 1: and so she was a kid that all the kids
Speaker 1: of the fifties grew up with, and so she was
Speaker 1: somebody who I'm trying to think of who our equivalent
Speaker 1: would be now, I mean somebody that, like you knew
Speaker 1: as like a child star that then kind of grew
Speaker 1: up so she had a real be.
Speaker 3: Like Hannah Montana, Right, Yeah, that's good. That's a good example.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody that really like had a really special
Speaker 1: place in the heart of the baby boomer kids at
Speaker 1: this time because they all kind of grew up together.
Speaker 1: So if Frankie Avalon and at Fudaicello are kind of
Speaker 1: the king and queen of these Beach Party movies, they
Speaker 1: star in the vast majority of them. The studio that's
Speaker 1: mainly responsible for making the kind of the official canon
Speaker 1: one is called American International pictures and there's seven of them,
Speaker 1: but there's all sorts of like off market ones as well,
Speaker 1: and they all have hilarious names like you know, doctor
Speaker 1: Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and how to Stuff a
Speaker 1: Wild Bikini. I think they almost all have bikini in
Speaker 1: the name.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and this is.
Speaker 1: The part of the episode where Shuhorn in a whole
Speaker 1: bit about the southern California myth popularized in the early
Speaker 1: sixties by not only these beach party movies, but then
Speaker 1: you get the songs to the Beach Boys and Jan
Speaker 1: and Dean, where if you were a kid in the
Speaker 1: Midwest and you were existing on a diet of like,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever was being fed to you as sort
Speaker 1: of stuff for teens movies and music, you would have
Speaker 1: this concent of California being a place where all the
Speaker 1: guys were basically walking surfboards and all the women were
Speaker 1: blondes and bikinis and everybody was eating burgers and cherry
Speaker 1: cokes and drove around in convertibles and surfed all day
Speaker 1: and essentially it's the popular face of teenage consumerism. To
Speaker 1: get it back to the you know, the point of
Speaker 1: this episode of Bikinis, there was a movie.
Speaker 3: It wasn't one of the sort of the.
Speaker 1: Main beach party movies, but there was one called for
Speaker 1: those who think young and not. Sort of the ethos
Speaker 1: of all these movies. They say that probably more than.
Speaker 3: Any singular pop cultural phenomenon.
Speaker 1: These beach party movies probably made the bikini more acceptable
Speaker 1: to the mainstream. If the Hollywood starlets took it out
Speaker 1: of the realm of the burlesque, these beach party movies
Speaker 1: made it something that acceptable for kids, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: something that felt very adult and very like inappropriate. Suddenly
Speaker 1: it was something that felt a lot more fun, although
Speaker 1: Disney didn't think so. I guess Disney had very strict
Speaker 1: rules about what because of net Funacello again was signed
Speaker 1: to Disney for her time in The Mickey Mouse Club.
Speaker 3: She had very specific.
Speaker 2: Rules about what kind of bikini she was allowed to wear,
Speaker 2: because Old Walt held her to her morals clause in
Speaker 2: her Disney contract.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and it's fine.
Speaker 2: I mean, you get the whole notion too, Like in
Speaker 2: this whole area and era, you know, the Beatles are
Speaker 2: coming over and sort of pushing the envelope where they
Speaker 2: can with the hair, and you know it is the
Speaker 2: whole period that every hagiographic concept of the of the
Speaker 2: sixties will drill into your head, which is.
Speaker 3: That societal mores were changing, but you know they were.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to the most iconic bikini of
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties. Some people might argue with me, those
Speaker 2: people are wrong. Were quel In Welch that deer skin
Speaker 2: bikini from one million years BC and the poster of
Speaker 2: her It's one of the most defining images of the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties. No less an authority than The New York
Speaker 2: Times described Welch in the film as a marvelous, breathing
Speaker 2: monument to womankind. I could not find out who wrote that.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was Pauline Kale. That costume was
Speaker 2: not so much sewn as it was sculpted.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: She said that the costumer for the film, Carl Toms,
Speaker 2: just draped her in deer skin and sort of cut
Speaker 2: around with scissors. I probably shouldn't be leering at this
Speaker 2: too too much, because she had. She did say in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve that she never wanted to wear it, and
Speaker 2: so much to the point where she turned down half
Speaker 2: a mill to be in another one of these movies
Speaker 2: and classic Hollywood. They didn't let her keep it. They
Speaker 2: just realtered it, presumably again with scissors, to be reused
Speaker 2: in a movie two years later called Eve.
Speaker 1: That makes me really sad for a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1: One that she really hated doing it, and that makes
Speaker 1: me sad, And I'm also really sad that they tampered
Speaker 1: with this iconic bit of movie history. I feel like
Speaker 1: every episode we do the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones it
Speaker 1: belongs to a museum. But I mean, for real, though,
Speaker 1: My favorite little tangent about one million years BC and
Speaker 1: the whole sort of press scrum around it, was that
Speaker 1: one of the promo photos featured Verkel Welch in the
Speaker 1: fur outfit.
Speaker 3: On a crucifix.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen this picture?
Speaker 3: That is wild? Yeah.
Speaker 1: They should not have done that, No, I mean predicably.
Speaker 1: This photo was not released at the time. It was
Speaker 1: actually hidden for thirty years, and it was taken by
Speaker 1: the legendary photographer Terry O'Neil, who explained this unorthodox tableau.
Speaker 1: He said, I wanted to symbolize the dilemma facing Welsh
Speaker 1: as the female sex symbol of the decade, crucified for
Speaker 1: her sexuality by the movie industry and the wider public
Speaker 1: who did not take her seriously as an actress. And
Speaker 1: something I think also interesting, the photo is apparently framed
Speaker 1: in a.
Speaker 3: Spot of honor at Chloe Kardashian's house.
Speaker 2: And having said all that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 2: more too much information right after this. Other famous bikinis
Speaker 2: on screen Gloria Hendry in Live and Let Die in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. She gets an honorable mention because even
Speaker 2: if the design of the bikini in the film wasn't
Speaker 2: especially notable, she was the first black bond girl. Also
Speaker 2: from that same year, Pam Greer in Coffee. She's wearing
Speaker 2: a white bikini poolside, and that pretty much. She had
Speaker 2: been in a bunch of lower tier exploitation films prior
Speaker 2: to that, but Coffee is really what launches her into
Speaker 2: the zeitgeist, along with Foxy Brown. Yeah, pamgrea rules, I
Speaker 2: didn't know this. Jacqueline Smith caused some controversy because one
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventy six promotional photos that went out
Speaker 2: for Charlie's Angels her other fair Faucet.
Speaker 3: And the other one.
Speaker 2: Thousand and aven well whatever the other one, they were
Speaker 2: fully clothed and Jacqueline Smith is wearing a white bikini
Speaker 2: standing next to them. But that thunder God stole and
Speaker 2: right quick, because Farah Faust jumps into her red one
Speaker 2: piece to promote the show, and probably the second best
Speaker 2: selling poster in the history of cheesecake posters is launched.
Speaker 3: Well what we got next?
Speaker 2: We got oh Phoebe Kate's coming Out of the Pool
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty twos Fast Times at Ridgemont High the
Speaker 2: car's song moving in stereo obviously an all time moment
Speaker 2: for the film.
Speaker 3: Kate's this is kind of complicated.
Speaker 2: She has good memories of making this film, but she
Speaker 2: had done a film just before this called Paradise, which
Speaker 2: had also nudity in it, from her at just seventeen,
Speaker 2: and she did not feel very good about doing that
Speaker 2: film because I guess it was like a darker, more
Speaker 2: drama thing. So this one felt like more lighthearted into comparison.
Speaker 2: But you know, she did end up retiring in the nineties,
Speaker 2: and so I feel it feels gross, is all I'll say.
Speaker 2: Full stop.
Speaker 1: She comes to a very quite an interesting show of
Speaker 1: his family. I think her dad created the sixty four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars question.
Speaker 2: One year after Fast Times, we get Carrie Fisher in
Speaker 2: the what has passed into the lexicon as slave layout,
Speaker 2: which is a little unfortunate in return of the Jedi,
Speaker 2: the metal bikini and the maroon skirt situation designed by
Speaker 2: Aggie Gerrard Rogers, who has done a ton of stuff,
Speaker 2: American graffiti, The Conversation One flew Over, The Cuckoo's Nest, Cocoon,
Speaker 2: Pee's Big Venture, the Color Purple, the Witches of Eastwick, Beetlejuice,
Speaker 2: the Fugitive, Mister Holland's opis the rain Maker, the holy Man?
Speaker 1: Why did you end with the holy Man's ay Murphy movie?
Speaker 2: It is, yeah, I think I put that in as
Speaker 2: a punchline after all of this other iconic stuff that
Speaker 2: they've done.
Speaker 3: So they were working at Island.
Speaker 2: Was where that that gout design which is course Industrial
Speaker 2: Light Magic, George Lucas's SFX company. This was done from
Speaker 2: sketches by Nilo Rodis Jammero Yamero.
Speaker 3: Fisher had to wear.
Speaker 2: An actual bronze one of the thing for still shots,
Speaker 2: but there were other versions of it made and plastic
Speaker 2: and rubber for when she has to move with her
Speaker 2: characteristic rapier wit. She said of the bikini. If you
Speaker 2: stood behind me, you could see straight to Florida. You'll
Speaker 2: have to ask Boba Fette about that. And then she
Speaker 2: also called it what supermodels will eventually wear in the
Speaker 2: seventh level of hell.
Speaker 1: I don't like this. I remember seeing that as a
Speaker 1: kid and thinking that it just felt wrong that she
Speaker 1: was forced just the Kirr character, was forced to wear
Speaker 1: that by this big creepy blob. And now as an
Speaker 1: older person, I mean, I don't know enough about Star
Speaker 1: Wars to speak to this with any level of expertise,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like George Lucas was kind of a
Speaker 1: creep when it came to Kerrie Fisher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, sure.
Speaker 1: She roasted him at his AFI tribute and she mentioned
Speaker 1: sort of stuff like you just said about this unpleasant
Speaker 1: experience wearing this thing, and it seemed like there was
Speaker 1: like everyone laughed, but it seemed like there was genuine
Speaker 1: anger there. And she's often told the story about how
Speaker 1: when she showed up on the set for the first
Speaker 1: time in her Princess Leiah outfit, like the white wrap thing,
Speaker 1: and he took one look at her and said, you're
Speaker 1: wearing underwear.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to take that off, and she said
Speaker 3: why and.
Speaker 1: George said with the most conviction that she said made
Speaker 1: her laugh because there's no underwear in space.
Speaker 3: It's just an insane thing to say.
Speaker 1: And they also had that cameo in Hooked Together where
Speaker 1: they played that couple kissing on the bridge who get
Speaker 1: sprinkled with fairy ghost and then float away.
Speaker 3: So I'm really confused about that relationship.
Speaker 1: If it was like playful or if it was there
Speaker 1: was a creepy edge to it, I don't know.
Speaker 2: So I I you know, I did looked at way
Speaker 2: too many listicals that were like the most iconic swimsuits
Speaker 2: in film and television, and.
Speaker 3: I probably wrote some of those for VH. Yeah, oh same.
Speaker 2: I feel like the rest of the eighties is kind
Speaker 2: of overlooked, but you know, the big ones that always
Speaker 2: pop up again is the high cut one piece that
Speaker 2: Pamela Anderson primarily but also Carmen Electra on Bay. And
Speaker 2: then once we get into the nineties, I don't like
Speaker 2: getting into this hole, like this actress past the age
Speaker 2: of thirty looks amazing in a bikini, but Angela Bassett's
Speaker 2: pink bikini and how Stella got her groove back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight is one of the ones that's most
Speaker 2: frequently mentioned in that That movie, I guess is something
Speaker 2: of a groundbreaking one for it's like that and the
Speaker 2: graduate for advancing the cougar narrative.
Speaker 3: I guess, Oh.
Speaker 1: I just forgetting American Pie.
Speaker 2: But okay, oh yeah, duh, American Pie was what two
Speaker 2: years later ninety nine? Okay, And I just like the
Speaker 2: one that Tara Reid wears in Big Lebowski as Bunny Glebowski.
Speaker 2: The Green One. Halle Berry deserves.
Speaker 3: An honorable mention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for wearing an updated version of the ursula andres bikini,
Speaker 2: this time in an orange which is probably the only
Speaker 2: thing anyone remembers from Die Another Day in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. I have stopped caring about this segment the
Speaker 2: cast of spring Breakers. I don't know, it's interesting because
Speaker 2: there's a longer conversation to be had for a different podcast.
Speaker 2: But I kind of assume like the notion of like
Speaker 2: an iconic piece of swimmer in media kind of starts
Speaker 2: to fall off with social media, you know.
Speaker 1: Or the Internet, I don't know where.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: You stop having to like people stop talking about like oh,
Speaker 2: you gotta see like we're Cole Wilch in this movie.
Speaker 2: Once it was just like I can just open my
Speaker 2: phone and be flooded with every conceivable perversion that it
Speaker 2: could I could ever dream for. But there's one last
Speaker 2: bit of swimwear ef Eemera in the Monoculture. And now
Speaker 2: we're getting into a segment that I like to call
Speaker 2: what we talk about when we talk about Thong song.
Speaker 2: You can't get to Thong song without going through that thing.
Speaker 2: Itsy bitsy song to the first big novelty hit with
Speaker 2: bikini in the title, probably the biggest Beach Boys California.
Speaker 3: Girls one, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just want to bring up the Cramps, who have
Speaker 2: a song called Bikini Girls with Machine Guns because Cramp's
Speaker 2: rule bikini Kill is also coming up through the nineties.
Speaker 2: Their name was inspired by a nineteen sixty seven B
Speaker 2: movie called The Million Eyes of Sumuru.
Speaker 3: Starring Frankie Avalon. Baby.
Speaker 2: It all comes full circle, But I would argue that
Speaker 2: the high water mark pun fully intended for the Bikini's
Speaker 2: impact on music is Cisco's Deathless Jam Thong Song. There
Speaker 2: is no definite article on there, despite what millions of
Speaker 2: people have Mandala effected themselves into thinking it is just
Speaker 2: thong song. Full stop, there's nova damn it one of
Speaker 2: the all time songs of the summer, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that it came out in February of two thousand, right
Speaker 2: in time for spring break. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So
Speaker 2: a little quick bits about that song. Songwriters Desmond Child
Speaker 2: and an ex member of Minudo Draco Rosa. They got
Speaker 2: a songwriting credit because of the interpolation of living Leavita Loco.
Speaker 2: So just when Cisco says she's living Avida Loka, they
Speaker 2: get a cut of the thong song now, which is
Speaker 2: that's work smart, not hard baby. So in the original
Speaker 2: beat that was sent to Cisco, the strings were sampled
Speaker 2: from West Montgomery's cover of eleanor Rigby. Wes Montgoverery and
Speaker 2: one of the greatest jazz guitars of all time, famously
Speaker 2: super crossed over by doing a bunch of Beatles covers,
Speaker 2: which I think is some of them were very good
Speaker 2: if they're not like truly straight ahead jazz.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the strings from.
Speaker 2: His version of eleanor Rigby were in the original beat
Speaker 2: of this song, and Cisco says that he knew that
Speaker 2: that would be a problem, So he tweaked the string arrangement,
Speaker 2: and he claims in an oral history done for def
Speaker 2: Jam that he pulled in some of the string musicians
Speaker 2: who were also currently playing on the soundtrack for Star
Speaker 2: Wars The Phantom.
Speaker 1: Menace Unified Theory of nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So at some point they went from like.
Speaker 2: Ho d that song slaps the duel of the fates, uh,
Speaker 2: and then they went and did the strings on thong song.
Speaker 2: Strings for that. That's pretty incredible. Yeah, I assumes good
Speaker 2: for Cisco. In that oral history, he gives one of
Speaker 2: my favorite quotes of all time about the first time
Speaker 2: that he saw a thong, which is the incident that
Speaker 2: inspired the song Thong Song. He says, and I quote,
Speaker 2: do you ever see that movie The Ten Commendments. It's
Speaker 2: an old school movie. Charlton Heston. At first, when he
Speaker 2: was in Egypt, his hair was dark. Then he went
Speaker 2: up in the mountains and saw God, and when he
Speaker 2: came back down his hair was silver. That's literally what
Speaker 2: happened to me. He also claims that the reason that
Speaker 2: the video has so many of women in it upside
Speaker 2: down was because the FCC was like, you can't show
Speaker 2: thongs in a music video, and Cisco says, quote, I
Speaker 2: was like, what if you shot the girls upside down,
Speaker 2: then technically it's not a thong, which I don't get,
Speaker 2: but sure, and they says that's why on the beach
Speaker 2: we shoot at that angle and we got away with it.
Speaker 3: And once we got away with.
Speaker 2: That, it's like we opened the floodgates for how much
Speaker 2: booty you could sh show in a video.
Speaker 3: This specs the question. Is Cisco smart?
Speaker 2: Actually he's not wrong, but he's also not right because
Speaker 2: there were like two Live Crew videos Baby Got Back,
Speaker 2: Baby Got Basket.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about it soon on the show Rex and Effects.
Speaker 2: Shaker is another big one from that sort of tillation
Speaker 2: early nineties era, but.
Speaker 1: No I interviewed Uncle Luke from two Live Crew of
Speaker 1: h one. We did a picture me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1: It's a video of that somewhere.
Speaker 3: It was on video. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Lastly, my other favorite Cisco bit is that he contacted
Speaker 2: Victoria's secret because he was like, Hey, you know, I've
Speaker 2: got this number one song in the country about thongs.
Speaker 2: Let's take a meeting, and they did, but apparently they
Speaker 2: kind of nicely laughed him off because by the time
Speaker 2: he got in contact with them, thong sales had already
Speaker 2: gone up eighty percent.
Speaker 1: Hey, you've done our.
Speaker 2: Work for Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well speak, Yeah, we're winding down.
Speaker 2: We're winding down.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Are there miss bikinis in the monoculture? Tweet at us
Speaker 3: at because of the monoculture.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of bikinis and money, before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: I'd like to discuss the most expensive bikini in the world.
Speaker 1: And it was created by jeweler Susan Rosen for a
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated shoot with model Molly Sims. And the piece
Speaker 1: is made from over one hundred and fifty carrots of
Speaker 1: flawless diamonds set in platinum. Now, Heigel price is right time.
Speaker 1: Would you care to guess without going over what is
Speaker 1: this bikini valued at one.
Speaker 3: Hundred and fifty carrots of diamonds set in platinum. But
Speaker 3: it's not that big because it's a bikini.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually very very small. Yeah, three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh, way way more. It's obscene.
Speaker 4: No, it's two mil up up, up, up up. You're kidding, Nope, nope, no,
Speaker 4: just go ahead then thirty million. Holy yeah, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 4: well this country is so that then they bailed out
Speaker 4: the banks like the last Jesus Christ, this country is diseased.
Speaker 3: Yes, thirty million dollars.
Speaker 1: Thirty million dollars. Yeah, a single magazine cover. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was even a cover.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't understand what function it served. But but google
Speaker 1: it it's it's uh, oh my god. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't really understand why it exists. Holy well, but
Speaker 1: uh what but you know, how yeah?
Speaker 3: What? How else does the bikini evolved?
Speaker 1: Yes, this brings us to a segmentatic to call the
Speaker 1: bikini in the twenty first century. Please my take my
Speaker 1: m y U class. I'm an adjunct professor the bikini
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century. Now, this thirty million dollar
Speaker 1: bikini can do many things, but it cannot charge your phone.
Speaker 1: But thankfully there's a Brooklyland based designer named Andrew Schneider,
Speaker 1: and he took care of this problem. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: he unveiled the solar bikini, which is a bikini made
Speaker 1: of solar panels with a socket in the bottom to
Speaker 1: charge your devices while you tan a USB socket and
Speaker 1: it went into very limited production, but according to Schneider,
Speaker 1: each solar paneled swimsuit took up to eighty hours to make,
Speaker 1: and as a result, it can be quite pricey, ranging
Speaker 1: can cost from five hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and up In said, yes, but I personally feel good
Speaker 1: that fascinating new advances and bikini technology are being made
Speaker 1: well into the new millennium.
Speaker 2: And I think that brings us up to now. I mean,
Speaker 2: what else is there to say about the good old bikini.
Speaker 2: The world's first bikini museum is currently under construction in
Speaker 2: bad Rappaow in Germany.
Speaker 1: Why there the place that banned bikinis, I know, seventies.
Speaker 2: Wow, they're making atonement. But by some figures cited last
Speaker 2: year in Women's Wear Daily, the global swim market was
Speaker 2: worth more than sixteen billion in twenty twenty. That's oil
Speaker 2: industry numbers, baby, and some estimates put its growth to
Speaker 2: anywhere from twenty one to twenty nine billion by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, which makes sense because wow, we're all gonna
Speaker 2: be cooked alive by then. Less monetarily, there's at least
Speaker 2: one historian. Her name is Beth Dincuff Charleston, who's worked
Speaker 2: at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Speaker 2: and Parsons School of Design, found a quote from her
Speaker 2: from two thousand and seven saying the bikini represents a
Speaker 2: social leap involving body consciousness, moral concerns, and sexual attitudes,
Speaker 2: which all told not a bad pool quote for something
Speaker 2: named after the atomic bomb test. Well, Jordan, it's time
Speaker 2: for me to take this. Itsy bitsy teeny weeny little episode,
Speaker 2: little little episode aikini and beach party blanket bingo my
Speaker 2: way out of here. Jordan has this tradition of just
Speaker 2: letting me punch myself out at air trying to find
Speaker 2: a kicker for these episodes. What we need to do
Speaker 2: is just fade in one of those like shitty like
Speaker 2: beach blanket bingo style songs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you got weekend?
Speaker 1: The Party peer by Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters.
Speaker 1: What's from that thing you do? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, No, I want you to do your
Speaker 2: DJ voice and introduce this. Well, go ahead, yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: give us the Dick Duvet voice as.
Speaker 1: All right, folks, with a ride out tonight, We're taking
Speaker 1: here the weekend and party peer with Captain Geeche and
Speaker 1: the Shrimp Shack Shooters. Keep it cool, folks, have a
Speaker 1: great weekend, folks.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening. This has been too much information.
Speaker 3: I'm Alex Heigel.
Speaker 2: That was DJ Dick Duvet and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive.
Speaker 3: Producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Mike Johns.
Speaker 3: The show was.
Speaker 2: Researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk and Alex Heigel.
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.