Women We Love in Bikinis

What type of swimsuit can you wear when you're a Baby Boomer. Well, forget itsy bitsy teenie weenies if you don't have a full-time personal trainer (or you are one). Sure, I have a friend who's around my age, but she teaches Pilates. And, I'm giving her permission to wear whatever kind of bathing suit she wants.

The bikini was invented by Louis Reard and Jacques Heim, in Paris in 1946. However, due to its skimpiness, hardly anyone had the courage to wear a bikini until the late 1950s, when actress Brigitte Bardot created a splash by wearing a bikini in the film, 'And God Created Woman.' The cheap bikinis revolution subsequently became a rage, and even got its own song: 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini'.

Modern origin According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis R?ard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 and introduced on July 5 at a fashion show at Piscine Molitor in Paris. It was a string bikini with a g-string back. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the thermonuclear device. However, women in Paris were wearing bikinis one year before the bikini was "invented". This fact is documented with pictures in the July 16, 1945 issue of Life. Film of holidaymakers in Germany in the 1930's show women wearing two-piece bathing suits.
Of course the magazine article did not attach the name "bikini" to the swimsuit. At that time the atomic bomb test was a year in the future and virtually no one had ever heard of Bikini Atoll. The article instead spoke of the "French sequin bathing suits ". But although the name had not yet been adopted, the swimsuits that the Parisian women were wearing are clearly recognizable as bikinis in style and coverage. Coincidentally, the date of publication of the magazine, July 16, 1945, was the very same day that the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. Reard's suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the "Atome" (named for its size) and advertised it as the world's "smallest bathing suit". Reard split the "atome" even smaller, but could not find a model who would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris as his model.