Extract – Under the swimsuit | The unveiling of the modern body

For the historian of the body and clothing, the encounter with the bathing suit is both disconcerting and precious.

Devoting a book to a few square centimeters of fabric may seem futile, synonymous with an intellectual vacation in the eyes of the researcher unaccustomed to examining frivolous things. But this jersey that hides the minimum and reveals the maximum deserves its place among academic objects. Scented with monoï, decried by the most prudish, adored by the victims of fashion, this tiny piece of the summer dressing room is no longer a poor relation of research. The bathing suit bears witness to how the skin was made public. It also tells how the female body is appreciated and depreciated. At the origin of the jersey is the body.

Jersey and companies

[…] The history of the swimsuit is that of the skin made public, of the unveiling of the modern body. It’s the story of how flesh and cloth came together to serve sport, sex and culture. It is also the story of taboos, decided by men, affecting the female body, therefore part of the story of patriarchy. Let’s not forget the history of capitalism in connection with the body that has become an object of consumption and the development of technological fibers. Finally, it is the story of a seizure of power whose forces balance each other out in a choreography playing on the concealment and disclosure of pieces of skin. So here is the swimsuit, ridiculous, tiny, able to get out of the quicksands of civilization and its discontents. A modern day hero.

In 1940, the American journalist Foster Rhea Dulles, a specialist in political and cultural relations, expressed in the best possible way what the acceptance of the swimsuit means socially:

« The modern swimsuit […] symbolized the new status of women even more than the short skirts and bobbed hair of the Jazz Age or the athletic build of tennis and golf enthusiasts. It was the ultimate proof of the successful assertion of their right to enjoy the leisure they wanted, by dressing according to the demands of the sport rather than according to the taboo of an outdated modesty, and to enjoy it. in free and natural association with men. »

Limits have been placed on the role of women in many societies, including bans on bathing by self-proclaimed decency advocates. Bathing is the act of immersing all or part of the body in water for purifying, therapeutic, recreational or religious purposes. It is distinguished from swimming, which consists of self-propulsion of the body in water. When it becomes a sport, it is rather called swimming.

sign of the passions

The jersey has become over time the obvious symbol of globalized fashion. Its different forms adapt to economic, religious, aesthetic, sexual and technological cultures. Fantasy and desire are linked to the existence of the jersey. This is one of the reasons why it arouses passion. Eros watches. Cupid is not far away. Worn by the Misses as well as by the presidential candidates, the jersey has integrated all spheres of public life. Each era has its own form; with each social advance, its retreat of the number of centimeters. The fantasy of bathing beauties has become a permanent part of the landscape. On July 4, you can celebrate American Independence Day by wearing your patriotism on your mini triangle jersey. For over a hundred years, bathing suits have been the primary means used to undress women. Manufacturers seized the opportunity and determined the battle lines between flesh and fabric. They decide what should be exposed or concealed. Exhibition and the tendency to hypersexualization obviously raise the question of bodily perfection. The silhouette is still assailed by critics, before being besieged with implants and other botox injections.

[…] The bathing suit is perhaps, in history, the garment that has been most accused of futility, shamelessness, frivolity. But the consequences of its advent are profound: it has upset the human body, usually glorified in drapes, decorated, covered with artifices, because the biological truth of forms, of orange peel skin, of the belly pointing its nose, hair too, is finally exposed. What to do with this stubbornly deformed body? It had to be constrained, standardized, measured precisely. The jersey gives immediate bodily information. It does not transform nature. It shows that perfection does not exist. It points out weaknesses. The metamorphosis of the body in the bath is also the story of the female body: its victories and its defeats, its dreams, its social myths and its taboos, the backlashes.

The swimsuit is a support for projecting fantasies and popular trends, but it is also a marker of social movements. Denigrated for its lack of coverage, the swimsuit is also denigrated for the excitement it arouses and the bodily intelligence it forces you to adopt depending on the context. But above all, it is synonymous with hard-earned freedoms, in particular that of the happiness of being caressed by the rays of the sun.

The underside of the swimsuit – Another story of the body

Audrey Millet

Editions Les Peregrines

270 pages