Victor Matos
The few minutes of the scene in which actress Ursula Andrews emerged from the beach in a temptingly sized white bikini in 1962 to meet actor Sean Connery, the James Bond from the first film of the later saga: “Dr. No vs. Agent 007”, were enough to make the world shudder at such a captivating outfit.
The small piece had already been created by the Frenchman Louis Réard on 5 July 1946, which was worn by the model Micheline Bernardine and which set off alarm bells about the prevailing morality, which was even anathematized by the Church, which was branded as “scandalous and sinful for its design” by Pope Pius XII himself and which, after having been used in the 1951 Miss World London pageant, was banned from use in subsequent episodes.
The tiny swimsuit came to the cinema to be worn by stars Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, who became sex symbols, although the garment, considered an attack on morality at the time, gradually made its way around the world.
This bikini was imposed by the strength of women and not by the strength of fashion, as they undertook freedom movements within a feminist fight for their rights and had its moment of glory in the sixties, when it was accepted for sexual liberation that broke taboos and even raised the great Marilyn Monroe to fame.
Thus began the era of madness due to the rise of lycra and which gave way to other innovations such as the one-piece swimsuit, for the most daring, or the thong, which left nothing to the imagination.
Almost eighty years have passed since that happy creation that dazzled the world and was called bikini in homage to the French explosion of the atomic bomb test on the island of Bikini Atoll that shook the planet and that is why the piece took its name, which was not only a revolution of that time, but the explosion of feminine beauty that has lasted, and for new generations will last, until the day when we have sight to be enchanted by feminine beauty.
The monokini, the exaggeration of the seventies, having been overcome, and all taboos having been broken in our days, fashion does not hesitate to resort again to the one-piece swimsuit, while the great innovations remain, although more elastic and comfortable, with this bikini of our days.
Banned in San Cristóbal at the fair competition
Fifty years ago, the city council, through its highest spokesman, the president of the Municipal Council, Gerson Rodríguez Durán, decreed the prohibition of displaying the bikini to the candidates for the crown of the San Sebastián Fair of 1975, after the publication on the front page of this newspaper of a photograph of one of the candidates, Nancy Torres, wearing this swimsuit.
The highest municipal authority considered that this type of photographs were not a good example for the youth of that time and urged the candidates not to use them, otherwise they would be expelled from the contest.
To reaffirm this position, which she considered to be in the interest of morality and good manners, Rodríguez Durán invited journalists from the city’s print media to commit to not publishing this type of graphics, since the intention of the contest was to present the girls without any additional stimulus that would allow people to admire their bodies and not their qualities.
The affected woman apologized for having worn the daring outfit, but she was the one who was chosen as Queen of our biggest festival, in January 1975.
Once this episode was over, years later the girls wore bikinis without any restrictions.
Victor Matos
Anterior: The brilliance of black and gold gymnastics will be at the National Games
