Speaker 1: As we get ready for the summer season this Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend, we have to revisit the history of bathing suits.
Speaker 1: Why were women wearing things that looked like linen nightgowns
Speaker 1: to swim in back in the seventeen hundreds. More importantly,
Speaker 1: why did they slip into thirty pounds of wet wool
Speaker 1: for a dip in the ocean just over a century ago?
Speaker 1: And how did we fast forward to string bikinis, songs
Speaker 1: and speedos? Yeah, expeedoes. Sorry, but I'm Patty Steel feeling
Speaker 1: good about skin. That's next on the backstory. Okay, personally,
Speaker 1: I hate bathing suits unless your sports illustrated material. You're
Speaker 1: always putting on your bathing suit for the first time
Speaker 1: in the early season and asking yourself why it didn't
Speaker 1: work out just a little bit harder, or why you
Speaker 1: didn't buy a big, voluminous cover up. Anyway, I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you how the first bikini got its look
Speaker 1: and its name, But first let's see how that evolution began,
Speaker 1: where we were, how it changed we are at least
Speaker 1: for now. These days, you go to the beach, you're
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of naked flesh, right, but
Speaker 1: you know we weren't always treated to a skin show.
Speaker 1: I mean, swimming has been around for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Can you believe there are cave drawings that show people swimming.
Speaker 1: Greeks and Romans actually swam, mostly in the nude or
Speaker 1: in very skimpy outfits. Fast forward, and the problem is
Speaker 1: showing more of your body, dripping wet goes in and
Speaker 1: out of style, and for the folks who do want
Speaker 1: to take a refreshing dip, bathing suits get bulkier and
Speaker 1: more constricting. In fact, the more conservative people got about
Speaker 1: showing their bodies, the more swimming became kind of unpopular.
Speaker 1: In the seventeen hundreds, what they called sea bathing became
Speaker 1: red hot. Physicians decided there was a lot of health
Speaker 1: benefit to taking a dip in the sea for both
Speaker 1: women and men. But here's the thing. Complete immersion was
Speaker 1: a no no, particularly for women, since it made them
Speaker 1: seem unfeminine. So to lightly dip in women would wear loose,
Speaker 1: open linen bathing gowns very much like a kaftan or
Speaker 1: nightgown with elbow length sleeves. It sounds awful, but remember
Speaker 1: this back in their day. The clothing that they wore
Speaker 1: was corseted with layers of petticoats and skirts and hats
Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff. So these bathing gowns were
Speaker 1: way more comfortable at Mount Vernon. In fact, Washington's home
Speaker 1: in Virginia, you can actually see Martha Washington's blue and
Speaker 1: white striped bathing gown or little checks on it. Actually,
Speaker 1: it has led weight sewn into the hem to keep
Speaker 1: it from floating up in the water and exposing those
Speaker 1: fabulous Martha thighs. She was known to wear it on
Speaker 1: her many trips to the famous mineral springs in Berkeley Springs,
Speaker 1: West Virginia. But the eighteen hundreds saw the rise of
Speaker 1: Victorian standards of modesty, which made it even tougher to
Speaker 1: get wet and maintain your modesty. It's the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and now women's bathing suits are made of wool
Speaker 1: or flannel. These things weigh as much as twenty pounds
Speaker 1: and that's all. They're still dry. They have a jacket top,
Speaker 1: a skirt with again those lead weights in the hem
Speaker 1: to keep them from floating up. But they also wear
Speaker 1: pandaloons that come to the mid calf stockings all the
Speaker 1: way up in swim boots that lace up to your knees. Finally,
Speaker 1: there's a huge brimmed hat or hood, so no one
Speaker 1: sees your wet face or even recognizes you. So much
Speaker 1: for back to nature, right, So a well mannered lady
Speaker 1: heads to the beach with her regular daytime long dress, jacket, corset, petticoat, stockings, hats, gloves,
Speaker 1: and parasols. Not to mention her bustle, because in those days,
Speaker 1: a little tiny waist in a big butt, we're all
Speaker 1: the rage, kind of the first iteration of Jlo or
Speaker 1: the Kardashians. Once she arrives at the beach, she heads
Speaker 1: to this contraption that looks like a cabana on wheels.
Speaker 1: It's called a bathing machine. You can actually google it
Speaker 1: and see picks of these things lined up on the shore. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she gets in, changes into her big, heavy bathing seita,
Speaker 1: and then she and the machine are pulled by horse
Speaker 1: or human out into the water. Once in the surf,
Speaker 1: the doors on the ocean side open wide, shielding her
Speaker 1: from guys down the beach trying to sneak a peek.
Speaker 1: She's helped down some small steps into the water. Now
Speaker 1: she's ready for that refreshing swim as long as she
Speaker 1: doesn't mind being tied to the cabana by a rope
Speaker 1: while wearing thirty pounds of soaking wet wool got to
Speaker 1: keep her from getting carried out to sea. Right, and
Speaker 1: by the way, all of these suits were like really
Speaker 1: dark in color because that way you couldn't tell if
Speaker 1: you did see her whether she was wet or dry. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she paddles around for a little bit, then she's helped
Speaker 1: back into the bathing machine, where she towels off and
Speaker 1: has to get dressed once more into her heavy day clothes.
Speaker 1: It sounds really exhausting. I think I'd need another swim
Speaker 1: after that. No, but how did we get from there
Speaker 1: to hear in our string bikinis and thongs. Well, we
Speaker 1: head to the nineteen twenties when women began wanting more freedom,
Speaker 1: shorter hair, shorter dresses, pants, for god's sakes, cigarettes and
Speaker 1: any drinks of the gin, and that female independence kind
Speaker 1: of changes everything. Bathing suits still made of wool, but
Speaker 1: a thinner wool jersey are either one piece or have
Speaker 1: a long tank top that pulls down over long shorts
Speaker 1: that go past the mid thigh, and they're sleeveless and clinging.
Speaker 1: Early on, a few women get arrested for wearing them,
Speaker 1: even well known athletes. They make the older generation kind
Speaker 1: of nuts, but the design finally allows women to actually
Speaker 1: swim and allows other people to get a look at
Speaker 1: the shape of a woman's body. One famous female swimmer,
Speaker 1: Annette Kellerman, was actual perform for the British royal family,
Speaker 1: but they said not in her new fangled bathing suit
Speaker 1: because it showed the bottom half of her legs. She
Speaker 1: redesigned her competition bathing suit to please the palace by
Speaker 1: sowing long black stockings to the legs. Athletes today say
Speaker 1: that being comfortable in your uniform, whatever sport you're in,
Speaker 1: makes you feel better about yourself and allows you to
Speaker 1: perform at your best. So that's what women begin to
Speaker 1: feel like with these new, skimpier bathing suits. Now it's
Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties and the era of wool bathing
Speaker 1: suits is over, when rayon or something called elastic cotton
Speaker 1: replaces all that scratchy, saggy wet wool. But here's the
Speaker 1: real kicker. World War II is on the horizon and
Speaker 1: the government, trying to save resources, actually orders a ten
Speaker 1: percent reduction in the amount of fabric ues to make
Speaker 1: women's already much skimpier bathing suits than their mom's. War Yeah,
Speaker 1: put the pieces together and we can actually thank the
Speaker 1: government for the evolution of the thong. Well sort of.
Speaker 1: On top of that, all that nakedness makes women forget
Speaker 1: their devotion to protected pale skin and begin to go
Speaker 1: after a really fabulous golden tan. That leads to even
Speaker 1: smaller bathing suits to catch more rays. Now it's a
Speaker 1: post war world. As women, we're a lot more comfortable
Speaker 1: with our sexuality and more interested in sharing what we've got.
Speaker 1: But the biggest shock for the public, yikes, the exposure
Speaker 1: of the belly button, which wasn't allowed to be shown
Speaker 1: on TV. Believe this until nineteen eighty three, so it
Speaker 1: took some nudging. A designer in Paris came up with
Speaker 1: the first official bikini in nineteen forty six. You can
Speaker 1: google it. It actually looks like something you'd see on
Speaker 1: the beach today. The problem is he can't find a
Speaker 1: model willing to show it off, so he winds up
Speaker 1: hiring a young woman who was a topless showgirl in Paris,
Speaker 1: and he invites a ton of pop ROSSI to come
Speaker 1: take photos by a big public pool there. He names
Speaker 1: his little bits of fabric the Bikini Why because the
Speaker 1: unveiling came just days after a big test of an
Speaker 1: atomic bomb in the South Pacific in the Bikini Atoll,
Speaker 1: and he says it's a fitting name for this bomb show.
Speaker 1: It goes viral, of course, what a marketing guy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a huge deal and the eighteen year old stripper
Speaker 1: gets fifty thousand fan letters, of course, mostly from god guys.
Speaker 1: But unlike those crazy bathing machines, the Bikini never went away.
Speaker 1: Question is where do you think we're going to go next?
Speaker 1: Hope you like the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave
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Speaker 1: story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Speaker 1: Steele and on Instagram reel Patty Steele Happy Memorial Day.
Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
Speaker 1: the Elvis Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
Speaker 1: at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
Speaker 1: pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.