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One brave woman strikes a blow against the most absurd phrase of our time: "The bikini body is not supposed to be naturally occurring...it is a quasi-religious state of myth and artifice to which only the truly virtuous can aspire:"
The Iron-Fisted Tyranny Of The 'Bikini Body'
Seeded on Fri Jul 23, 2010 12:22 PM EDT
Article Source: Jezebel: Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing.- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (10)
Writes The Guardian's Laurie Penny
When it finally became popular in the 1960s, the bikini was a symbol of physical liberation, of beautiful women reacting to the stern sexual prudery of previous decades by exposing as much skin to the sun as they pleased. Today, as with many iterations of the sexual emancipation rhetoric of the 1960s, wearing a bikini is no longer associated with pleasure and daring, but with anxiety, dieting rituals and joyless physical performance...The bikini body has become cultural shorthand for a moral standard of female perfection whereby any physical flaw should be regarded as a source of shame, an obstacle to collective fantasies of glamour and happiness.
She's right: "bikini body" is the going code for "acceptable." It is always in bikinis that the tabloids feature the "best" and "worst" bodies
- 2 votes
#1 - Fri Jul 23, 2010 12:23 PM EDTWe should popularize the burkini both for world peace and women's sanity.
when you think about it even from the point of treating women as objects isn't a wrapped present more fun than unwrapped one? Imagination is a wonderful thing.
- 1 vote
how true. i am lucky enough to go with a beautiful,independant full figured women. i love her conventional swimsuit. she is much more attractiv,and less insecure. than the ladies bearing it all. a present wrapped is truly a beautiful thing.
- 1 vote
Something that the French apparently hate. There is a picture in the article.
US women used to wear something similar. No face covering but it did go down past their knees. That was around 1900. Too many drowned because of the weight of it, so they are dangerous. They had to hold onto ropes if they waded in the water.
1900s Bathing Suit | Victorian Bathing Suits
Since you're advocating it for women, you won't mind taking a chance on drowning due to excess weight, will you?
I'm very pale so I'll where it if you will. We don't have to worry about drowning with modern materials.
I won't wear it because I do worry about drowning. I've swum in the ocean my entire life and know how powerful it can be. Having extra yardage is a definite hazard no matter what it is made from.
- 1 vote
As did I which is why I'm less concerned but that was the east coast which is more,like,lake swimming than the west.
- 1 vote
I hate the idea that if it isn't "perfect" you should cover it up. Some arbitrary concept of perfection isn't the same as beauty. To me, running around in a bikini still represents freedom and I won't be intimidated by some sick idea that I need to be ashamed of every flaw.
- 1 vote
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