page_title: Bikini
section_title: Body ideals
hierarchical_section_title: Bikini / Body ideals
caption_attribution_description: English: Elle Macpherson's bikini body
context_page_description: A bikini is typically a women's two-piece swimsuit featuring two triangles of fabric on top that cover the woman's breasts, similar to a bra, and two triangles of fabric on the bottom: the front covering the pelvis but exposing the navel, and the back covering the buttocks. The size of the top and bottom can vary, from bikinis that offer full coverage of the breasts, pelvis, and buttocks, to more revealing designs with a thong or G-string bottom that covers only the mons pubis, but exposes the buttocks, and a top that covers little more than the areolae.
  In May 1946, Parisian fashion designer Jacques Heim released a two-piece swimsuit design that he named the Atome and advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world". Like swimsuits of the era, it covered the wearer's navel, and it failed to attract much attention. Clothing designer Louis Réard introduced his new, smaller design in July. He named the swimsuit after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had taken place only four days before. His skimpy design was risqué, exposing the wearer's navel and much of her buttocks.
context_section_description: In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole, owner of Cole of California, told Time that bikinis were designed for "diminutive Gallic women", as because "French girls have short legs... swimsuits have to be hiked up at the sides to make their legs look longer." In 1961, The New York Times reported the opinion that the bikini is permissible for people are not "too fat or too thin". In the 1960s etiquette writer Emily Post decreed that "[A bikini] is for perfect figures only, and for the very young." In The Bikini Book by Kelly Killoren Bensimon, swimwear designer Norma Kamali says, "Anyone with a tummy" should not wear a bikini. Since then, a number of bikini designers including Malia Mills have encouraged women of all ages and body types to take up the style. The 1970s saw the rise of the lean ideal of female body and figures like Cheryl Tiegs. Her figure remained in vogue in the 21st century.
  The fitness boom of the 1980s led to one of the biggest leaps in the evolution of the bikini. According to Mills, "The leg line became superhigh, the front was superlow, and the straps were superthin." Women's magazines used terms like "Bikini Belly", and workout programs were launched to develop a "bikini-worthy body". The tiny "fitness-bikinis" made of lycra were launched to cater to this hardbodied ideal. Movies like Blue Crush and TV reality shows like Surf Girls merged the concepts of bikini models and athletes together, further accentuating the toned body ideal. Some women, motivated by yearly Spring Break festivities that mark the start of the bikini season in North America, engage in eating disorders in an attempt to achieve the ideal bikini body.
  In 1993, Suzy Menkes, then Fashion Editor of the International Herald Tribune, suggested that women had begun to "revolt" against the "body ideal" and bikini "exposure." She wrote, "Significantly, on the beaches as on the streets, some of the youngest and prettiest women (who were once the only ones who dared to bare) seem to have decided that exposure is over." Nevertheless, professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, who competes in a bikini, claims that "confidence" alone can make a bikini sexy. One survey commissioned by Diet Chef, a UK home delivery service, reported by The Today Show and ridiculed by More magazine, showed that women should stop wearing bikinis by the age of 47.
caption: Six-time Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model Elle Macpherson,[7] nicknamed "The Body" by Time[222] who epitomized the bikini body ideal[223][224]
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