When bathing costumes became swimsuits for women - the 1950s

As a history adventurer, time-traveler, and girl-watcher, I take notice of the ladies. I'm no expert on women's fashion, but I'm now realizing that there was a gradual change of what was acceptable for them to wear on the beach. And maybe not so gradual, if you compare the very revealing swimsuits of the 1950s to the more modest bathing costumes of the 1920s, even 30s. Of course, it all started changing after the war.

And I'm not talking about bikinis here, I'm just talking about swimsuits, what most women nowadays would consider very modest, and call a "one piece". These must have taken a lot of nerve to wear, even before "itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikinis". And as you can see from the billboard there in Atlantic City in 1950, it would take a bit of convincing. The headline there says "When all you're wearing is a swim suit, be sure it's a Sea Nymph (a particular brand).


Hang on a second here, I'll go into my files and see if I can find a bathing costume from an earlier era. Here ya go:


These girls are wearing bathing costumes in 1922, and my best guess is that this was considered pretty darned racy back in those days! Showing quite a bit of leg! But it's really nothing compared to what women were wearing just a couple of decades later. Speaking for myself, by the time I was noticing girls at the beach, in the 1970s, the amount of material used was so minimal that it wasn't even fair to call what they were wearing "swimsuits", it was just the bare minimum allowed out in public to lie on the beach.

OK, where was I? Oh yeah, Atlantic City in 1950. Let's look around a bit if you can tear your eyes off of that billboard. Look! A wiener dog!




Thank you for time-traveling to 1950 Atlantic City with me! And if you've got it, flaunt it!

Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
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