navelophobia in 1946 : Indybay

To the SF Bay Times:

In the San Francisco of 2006, we have a nude beach.
And full nudity is tolerated at a few outdoor public events and protests
(most famously at Bay To Breakers and Folsom Street Fair).
SF's Pride celebration was clothing-optional in 2005 (tho at least one unexpected incident of genitaphobic repression happened in 2006;
please see SF Bay Times, 29 June).
At many more SF events and protests, bare butts and
bare female breasts aren't even an issue.

Now please climb into your time-travel machine,
and regress six decades,
back to a post-Victorian era when even
bare NAVELS
were an issue.

Yes, navelophobia prevailed,
even in "sophisticated" (?) Paris,
when the bikini swimsuit was first publicly modelled,
on 5 July 1946.

-- SUN
SF, CA 94142-6937

Monday 3 July 2006
.....

For details, please see article in
SF Chronicle, 2 July 2006
[
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/02/MNGOQJO6OK1.DTL
];
and a recent book (mentioned in the Chron article)
on the history of the bikini.

......
......

[ navelophobia in 1946 ]

Sunday, July 2, 2006 (SF Chronicle)

Fashion shocker of '46:
the naked belly button/
But the bikini wasn't a hit until Sixties

Sylvia Rubin,
Chronicle Fashion Editor
Copyright ©2006 SF Chronicle
...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/02/MNGOQJO6OK1.DTL

....
[ Annotated excerpts via
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nakity/ ]
........

So scandalous was the first modern-day bikini
that the only female free-spirited enough to pose in one
was a stripper.
Parisian engineer-turned-designer Louis Reard released the suit
at a fashion shoot on July 5, 1946.
[.....]

[ Notes by TBL:
Contemporary observers were most shocked by Reard's
public revealing of a woman's
NAVEL.
Navelophobia later declined, allowing the bikini to become
popular on U.S. beaches in the 60s.
Gernreich's Lycra "monokini" never became popular as U.S. beachwear;
but it sparked "topless" dance performances by women in U.S. nightclubs;
which later evolved into nude dance performances by women,
and by men. ]
....

Sixty years later [ in 2006 ],
the bikini is as integral a part of a young woman's summer wardrobe
as white shorts and hoop earrings.
And since the bikini,
bared flesh has become
[ almost]
as common at the nightclub, the mall and the five-star restaurant
as it is at the beach.
[....]
Today's bikinis are much the same as Reard's creation.
[....]
The first modern bikinis were made of cotton and jersey.
Then Lycra (DuPont's name for spandex) came along and everything changed.
The first Lycra bikini, the topless monokini, was designed by Rudi Gernreich in 1964.
[....]
[ Note by TBL: Rudi G. was a leftwing gay nudist, and one of the
secret L.A. founders of Mattachine. ]
[....]
A fourth century [ C.E.] mosaic ... in Sicily shows
female athletes and gymnasts wearing two-piece, navel-baring garments
with bandeau tops and hip-hugger bottoms.
[....]
----------
Copyright ©2006 SF Chronicle
......

navelophobia in 1946

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