The Feminist Infiltration of the Swimsuit – The American Spectator

The textile industry works within strange parameters. The price of women’s swimsuits increases proportionately as the amount of fabric used to make them is reduced, while the opposite is true of men’s, encouraging the presence of anxiously corseted groins on our beaches.

When it comes to summer fashion, try not to get carried away by price or by what other people are doing. Too often those others are the kind of people obsessed with walking around naked all over the place — not with the respectable purpose of enjoying troglodyte-themed debauchery, but with the strange premise of being more natural, like cereals, which paradoxically are sold clothed. Coming across those terrifying elderly, hairy, and fleshy gentlemen, walking around on the beach doing a pretty much full frontal, one has to wonder if, to be natural, it would not be enough for them to breakfast on those fashionable colored juices, which are more ecological than Al Gore’s eggs.

Someone has sold public opinion the idea that exposing everything to the world is sexy — or, at least, natural, and that makes some people believe that by walking on the beach wearing nothing but a ponytail they are at once flirting and fighting against the deforestation of the Amazon. People don’t stop to read the fine print. 

Stripping as an excuse for tanning, fortunately more widespread amongst females, could give rise to a lengthy debate on aesthetics as well as an ethics but in any case does not constitute a case for people assuming it to be a normal and ordinary practice, unless girls start engaging in other natural activities — such as working, going out to dinner, or heading to the movies — in the nude, something I can’t see happening in the near future, at least among normal women, which rules out Femen.

Reasons for the Bikini

The female one-piece swimsuit was of such distinguished beauty and elegance that it was to be expected that it would end up banished to the back of a closet in the age of progressive postmodernism. The fall of a civilization can be summed up in the transition from Liz Taylor in a bathing suit in Suddenly, Last Summer to Sacha Baron Cohen’s swimsuit in Borat. Good taste is unfashionable. 

Men’s swimsuits, which were tailored to a more than prudent length during the 1970s, grew to infinity in the 1990s, when major brands forced us to dive into the water wearing baggy underwear down to our ankles, colored black and orange with phosphorescent splashes. I mean, the garment was clearly designed to take a dip in the sea and, immediately after, rob a jewelry store and run over a bunch of old ladies.

The sad popularity of the bikini is an interesting find by manufacturers tired of wasting fabric on women’s swimwear. What’s more, the bikini puts an end to the possibility of hiding inside a dark one-piece swimsuit and concealing those extra pounds that are now frowned upon, so I cannot rule out that behind this whole trend is some chocolate muesli diet bar manufacturer.

Let’s Take This by Parts

The sole purpose of this item of clothing was to cover the woman’s private parts — this does not mean that her navel is a World Heritage Site — and to expose as much skin as possible to the sun. Then came the messy issue of how to keep the bikini up without straps, which leave marks, and, finally, once the option of putting up scaffolding with harnesses around each bather was discarded, designs that hold up the rest of the garment from very strange places were chosen, leaving men to wonder how this structural miracle is produced, as if its two parts — I guess that’s why it is called “bikini” and not “bit brace” — walk in suspension next to the woman.

The Butt

A very dangerous rumor has spread stating that the butt is a thing of elegance. And, certainly, elegance is often conditioned by sensory mechanisms that bulge and jump out at the sight of a butt in the wild. Whether female or male, butts, like other parts of the body that need not be mentioned, were born to live in captivity, for a series of reasons that go beyond this researcher’s current analysis.

As the result of some manner of fundamental error, designers have dictated that this summer girls must show their full buttocks at the beach. To maintain a certain level of decorum, a kind of bikini bottom only detectable with the help of a NASA microscope has been invented. 

There is no way to preserve beauty when showing one’s butt at the wrong time, and the contemplation of adolescent flesh trying to free itself from its corset made from the most extreme of miniature fabrics is a source of anguish for the whole beach. What if it tears? What if the seams burst? What if it all spills out? Ultimately, men and women need to know that beach fashion should be worn calmly, relaxed, and naturally. And when something is submitted to such tension that it’s on the verge of bursting, it’s impossible to be calm, to relax, to feel natural, or to avoid the fearful glances of other swimmers, anxious about the imminence of the Big Bang of the killer buttocks. 

My vote goes to a summer with safe butts and drinks at the beach bar surrounded by girls in Liz Taylor swimsuits.

Translated by Joel Dalmau.