Less is more – swimming in costumes
PEOPLE have
been skinny-dipping since the first ape-man (or woman) discovered how pleasant
it was to splash in the water.
It’s the logical way to get wet, since your clothes stay dry until you put them on again – provided you’ve allowed yourself to dry first.
Not that everybody got wet very much in days gone by. Europeans, so used to wrapping up because of the chilly weather, tended to stay dressed even in summer – especially once the Church started telling them it was desirable.
But there were still folk who did swim naked, and in Europe during the Middle Ages it was often those who were not Christian –
especially those mysterious folk referred to as fairies.[1]
The fairies, far from being mythical[2] and minute, were flesh and blood, albeit smaller than their neighbours. They can be likened to the Bushmen of Southern Africa: short people, dark-skinned,[3] knowledgeable about plant lore and many other things, and native to the areas where they lived for far longer than the Christians, descendants of Indo-European invaders.
Those who lived by the seashore used the resources of the shore (rather like the Bushman variety of Strandloper). They collected seaweed, or kelp, and so were known as kelpies.[4]
They also wore sealskins for the cold, and if one went walking near where they were known to roam and found sealskins lying about, it was a certain sign that there were kelpies nearby, swimming.
Young men – those not so scared by the warnings they had been given against such folk – would seek them out and try their luck with the kelpie women. Sometimes a kelpie would even marry a Christian man – although such a union was unlikely to last, because of the deep cultural divide separating the partners.
But the Middle Ages were also a period when there was a lot more cold weather than we know today. Both the Dark Age (from the 5th century AD to about the 10th century) and the late Middle Ages (from 1450 onwards) were chilly times, with less opportunity for swimming. Indeed, the Little Ice Age, which began in 1450, is not finally over yet.
But a few individuals, often just the fortunate few, would go swimming naked in the sea in the height of summer, frequently out of sight of prying eyes.
Few people paid much attention when King William IV and Queen Adelaide[5] went swimming in the buff at Brighton in the 1830s. And it seems that royals across the Continent observed this pastime much later than their time.
During the Second World War, Crown Prince Paul of Greece[6] lived in exile in South Africa with his family. Crown Princess Frederika[7] spent much of the war in the official residences of Prime Minister Jan Smuts, and would go with the Smuts family and her children to public beaches, where she would strip naked without caring who saw her.[8]
But this is getting ahead of the story. In Britain, after Queen Victoria came to the throne, the royal family was not much interested in sea bathing.
When sea bathing again became fashionable towards the end of the century, the Victorian mind approached it from a new perspective, and beaches were strictly segregated between men and women.
Both men and women were expected to change into bathing clothes – which, besides costumes that covered from neck to knee, included shoes and socks! Caravans drawn up on the beach and labelled “bathing machines” were provided for the convenience of fully clothed people to enter and change, and then be wheeled into the sea to allow bathing in at least waist-high water.
The 20th century saw these restrictions fall away gradually. First, mixed bathing was permitted, but men still had to cover their chests. Then trunks (without vests) began to be tolerated for men, and women were allowed to show their legs and their shoulders.
But as this was happening, many local authorities, supervising both sea bathing and swimming pools, imposed rules that, in some places, required men used to bathing bare-chested to cover up, and women to cover more than they were used to (skirts were often required on costumes).
The mid-1950s saw the invention of the bikini, allowing women to swim unhindered by cumbersome clothes. But an unforeseen consequence was that women became willing to wear ever smaller bikinis, exposing more and more flesh.
“Modesty” regulations initially barred bikinis in many places, and even after they were allowed, inspectors would go around with measuring tapes. But in many places girls learned that as long as nipples, pubic hair and the anus were not exposed, they could get away with wearing almost nothing.
In the 1980s the beaches of Brazil became renowned for the “dental floss” bikini, cut away so sharply in the groin area that a girl had to shave to avoid arrest for indecency. The makers of one-piece bathing suits caught onto the trend, and fashionable bathingwear is now almost invariably styled like this.
Schoolgirls needing swimwear for water sports are sometimes hard put to find a modest bathing suit that passes muster in a school environment.
Costumes that cover these areas are no longer necessarily decent either, since some modern materials (while remaining opaque) cling so closely to the slightest outline on the body that every bump on the nipple and every hair on the pubis can be seen.
It is conventionally seen as a liberating move for women that they can now wear so little on the beach or at the pool without actually being naked.
In fact the reverse is true, since the bathing suit (whether a one-piece, a bikini or one of the less frequently tolerated versions that either expose the breasts or provide sticker covering for the nipples) has gone from being a protective covering to a device for exposure, from being entirely asexual to drawing attention solely to a woman’s sexual function and attractiveness (or lack of it, which is why middle-aged women so often prefer not to swim at all).
Men at least have a wider choice, between trunks (often with fairly long legs) and the scantier varieties of swimming costume. But the scanty ones leave so little room for the male organs that these, too, are highlighted in an inappropriate way.
Convention fears that removing this minimal covering will put everything into a sexual context, but the sexual context is already there, flaunting itself for all the world to see.
What is hard to grasp, yet perfectly simple when seen in a properly ordered environment, is that removing the swimwear takes the focus away from sex altogether.
When two people strip and focus solely on each other, there is a sexual tension.
But when a number of people coexist in the same
environment without clothes, the sexual element disappears, and there is simply
acceptance of the presence of the others.
Good Christian folk fear orgies in circumstances like these, but provided the participants are committed to recreation, it just doesn’t happen.
– Strandloper
For three different approaches to the question of bathing costumes, have a look at World’s Best Swimsuit, Unclothes and Prison Suits on the International Naturists Association website.
