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♪It was an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini♪
♪That she wore for the first time today♪
I'm sure you've all heard that song before
and I apologize if it gets stuck in anyone's head for the rest of the day,
but I'm wondering if you have every listened to the lyrics,
because until a couple of weeks ago I had never really listened to them before,
so I'd like to review some of them with you.
The first verse goes: She was afraid to come out of the locker
She was as nervous as she could be
She was afraid to come out of the locker She was afraid that somebody would see
The song continues with her being afraid to come out into the open
so she hides in her blanket, and then she is afraid to come out of the water so she starts to turn blue.
Why was this woman so afraid? The song was released in 1960, 14 years after the bikini was invented in France.
French engineer, Louis Réard
invented the bikini. He worked in this mother's lingerie shop,
and he named it after the site of the atomic bomb
testing that year, Bikini Atoll.
He thought that the public's reaction would be like
an atomic bomb explosion, and he was right.
His design was based on exposing the belly button for the first time,
and he said it wasn't a true bikini unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.
It was so scandalous that no French model would wear it,
so he had to hire a stripper to debut his bikini.
Before Réard invented the bikini women wore one piece swimsuits... like this.
Or if they were two-piece swimsuits, they were still very modest,
exposed very little midriff, and always covered the belly button.
Before that, at the turn of the century, women wore the voluminous bathing costumes,
and they used things called bath machines, which were like a 6 by 6 by 6
wooden or canvas hut on wheels.
The women would get inside of the bathing machine in her clothes, and
then she would change into here bathing costume, and horses, or sometimes people
would drag the bathing machine down to the shoreline and then the women would get straight in the water
so that no one would see her in her bathing costume.
We have certainly come a long way since then.
From practically wearing a house, 36 square feet,
to wearing about 36 square inches of fabric.
You go to the beach today and it seems like everyone is wearing a bikini, but it was not
and instant hit in the United States.
It was seen as a suspect garment favored by
licentious Mediterranean types.
In 1957, Modern Girl magazine said it was hardly
necessary to waste words on the so called bikini
because no girl with tact or decency would ever wear such a thing.
And one writer described the bikini as a two -piece bathing-suit that revealed everything
about a girl except for her mother's maiden name.
Guards at the beach would measure bathing-suits
and women wearing bikinis were sure to get kicked off the beach.
So its no wonder that the girl in the song was afraid
to come out of the water.
With the 1960's, however, came the *** revolution and the women's movement,
and the rising popularity of the bikini.
Soon no one was afraid to wear one and in 1965
a woman told Time Magazine that it was almost square no to.
Last year alone, annual spending on the bikini totaled 8 billion dollars.
The popularity of the bikini has been attributed to the power of women,
not the power of fashion.
and a New York Times reporter called the bikini the millennial equivalent of
the power suit.
So I would like to take a couple of minutes to examine
the so-called power that wearing the bikini brings.
A few years ago, male college students at Princeton University
participated in studies of how the male brain reacts to seeing
people in different amounts of clothing.
Brain scans revealed that when males are show pictures
of *** clad women the region of the brain
associated with tools, such as screwdrivers and hammers,
lit up.
Some men showed zero brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex
which is the part of the brain that lights up when
one ponders another person's thoughts feelings
and intentions.
Researchers found it shocking because they almost never
see this part of the brain shut down in this way.
A Princeton professor said: " It's as if they are reacting
to these women as if they are not fully human. It is consistent with the idea
that they are responding to these photographs
as if they are responding to objects, not people."
In a separate Princeton study, when men viewed images of
women in bikinis, they often associated with
first person action verbs, such as: I push, I grab, I handle.
But when they saw images of women dressed modestly, they
associated them with third person action verbs,
such as she pushes, she grabs.
Analysis at the National Geographic concluded that bikinis
really do inspire people to view women as objects.
As something to be used rather than someone to connect with.
So, it seems, that wearing a bikini does give a woman power,
the power to shut down a man's ability to see her as a person,
but rather as an object.
This is surely not the kind of power that women were searching for.
The power to be treated as an equal, to be seen
as in control, and to be taken seriously.
It seems that the kind of power that they are searching for
is more attainable when they dress modestly.
But now comes the problem of modesty.
the very word of "modesty" is often met with
such disdain, especially among the younger
high-school crowd.
I remember speaking to a group of teenagers in New York,
and when I mentioned modesty this girl
yelled from the back: "What am I supposed to dress
like then? A grandma?"
And I was scared... but I have to admit,
I felt the same thing when I first learned
about modestly.
I thought it meant I had to be frumpy and dumpy and out of fashion.
And I imagined myself wearing dresses like this:
Sitting alone in my living room, never going
on another date again, and never getting married.
And I was particularly frustrated when shopping for a swimsuit when I decided
not to wear bikinis anymore, because all I could find
were things that my grandma would actually wear.
Instead of being discouraged, I took matters into
my own hands and I designed my own swimsuit.
And the first time I wore it a few girls asked where I got it,
the second time a few more, and so on and so forth.
So I decided to put my MBA to use which made
my parents so happy, and start my own swimsuit company.
My goal is to disprove the age-old notion that when it comes to swimsuits, less is more.
And that you can dress modestly without sacrificing fashion.
My inspiration for my swimsuit line is Audrey Hepburn,
who is timeless and classy and who happened to have dressed very modestly.
I don't think people thing of Audrey Hepburn and think
frumpy dumpy and out of fashion.
These are some of my designs:
And my tagline is: "Who says it has to be itsy bitsy?"
Well to answer the question if you look at today's society everyone, everyone says it has to be itsy bitsy
Fashion designers, the media, and, let's face it,
sometimes parents. Little girls would not be
going around in sexy underwear and skimpy
bikinis if it wasn't for their parents buying them for them.
I believe that the woman was afraid to come out of the water
because she had a natural sense of modesty about her,
that has been stripped away by today's culture.
And we need to bring it back.
I've dedicated a lot of my time, I travel
all over the country speaking to girls about this issue.
I've just written a book called "Decent Exposure" about it.
And we need to teach girls that modesty isn't about
covering up our bodies because they are bad.
Modesty isn't about hiding ourselves,
it's about revealing our dignity.
We were made beautiful, in His image and likeness.
So the question I'd like to leave you with is: "How will you use your beauty?"
Thank you.