second thoughts on Nkinis

[Wilson Gray]

On Dec 24, 2004, at 8:19 PM, sagehen wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: second thoughts on Nkinis
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Jim Landau writes:
>> I am hardly an expert on women's clothing, but I do not believe that
>> two-piece bathing suits, skimpy or otherwise, were at all common in
>> 1946.
> ~~~~~~~~
> As Wilson notes, two-piece bathing suits were  old news by 1946.  The
> earlier models were fairly substantial, built much like the underwear
> of
> the time.
> Halter tops which had been around for quite a long time, were often
> improvised with just a large bandana folded diagonally, run around the
> ribs
> just under the breasts and and tied in back. The apex would be folded
> over
> & pinned and a cord or ribbon run through the resulting casing and tied
> around the neck.  At any rate, the bare midriff was well known.  What
> the
> bikini DID (shockingly) reveal was the navel!

And it seems like only yesterday that women's navels were routinely
airbrushed out of photographs used in newspaper and "family-magazine"
ads for undies, bathing suits, and such.

>   And. of course, the bare
> cheeks of the buttocks.

In the words of Sir Mix-A-Lot,

Turn around
Stick it out
Even white boys got to shout
"Baby got back!"

-Wilson

> Another bare-midriff style that was popular throughout the war years
> was
> the man's shirt with the tails tucked up and tied in a knot over the
> breast
> bone.
> A. Murie
>