What many don’t know is that the inventor of America’s favorite swimwear, French engineer Louis Reard, actually named the bikini after the site of the atomic bomb testing that year—Bikini Atoll—because he thought that the public’s reaction would be “like an atomic bomb explosion.”
And he was right.
But after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the once taboo suit gained much wider acceptance, and now it’s become the beach wear of choice for little girls to full-grown women of all shapes, sizes and colors.
Bikinis have been branded as sexy, strong and confident; while one-pieces have been dismissed as old-school, ugly and just plain boring. And paired with the swimwear selections offered in most stores today, I’ll be the first to admit, those perceptions play into my purchasing decisions BIG time (like the last one-piece I owned MAY have been in 3rd grade).
A New York Times Reporter even coined the bikini the “millennial equivalent of the power suit.”
Well if that’s the case, Jessica Rey has just one question: Why aren’t women more empowered?
In a revealing Ted Talk, the designer and actress takes the audience through the evolution of the bikini, from its beginning as the scandalous swimsuit of the 1950s that only strippers would dare wear, to every girl’s summer must-have in the 21st century.
But what’s most shocking about Jessica’s speech is her research findings on the reactions of the male brain to seeing women in different amounts of clothing (@4:20). When they were shown bikinis, their brain scans were OFF THE CHARTS, showing that they subconsciously reduced the women wearing them to mere objects, akin to the likes of a screwdriver or a hammer…and that’s not all.
Watch Jessica elaborate on this fascinating study in the video below as she debunks the myth of the “power suit” once and for all.
