The 1907 Sydney bathing costume protests were a response to a proposed ordinance by the Waverley Shire Council to require the wearing of a skirt-like tunic by male bathers.

On the morning of Sunday 20 October, thousands of surf bathing enthusiasts poured onto the sands of Bondi, Manly, and Coogee beaches in various types of feminine dress enacting a humorous mockery of the proposed regulations.

Members of the Association, outraged by what they saw as their impending emasculation at the hands of the new bathing costume laws, organised the protest in less than two days.

In a procession from the northern end of Bondi Beach, men wearing their sisters' or grandmothers' underwear, ballet frills, curtains or tablecloths followed a banner upholding a dead seagull.

[9] The Sydney Morning Herald declared the regulations to be "an instance of the official mind run mad", arguing that if "both male and female bathers of all ages must be clad in a species of skirt [it] would be too ridiculous for comment were it not that many thousands of persons will immediately become the sufferers, some by the legal penalty, others by abandoning the surf, unless public opinion is enabled to express itself quickly and forcibly".

One Councillor at Euroa, Victoria for example, suggested the enforcement of a proper costume, from neck to knee, but "did not go as far as the Bondi mayor in New South Wales, in advocating a short skirt in addition".

[13] The "skirt" ordinance and the consequent demonstrations culminated decades of protest from conservative beach goers who decried the 'exhibitionism' of scantily clad surf bathers.