Bikini in popular culture
In 1960, Brian Hyland's pop song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" inspired a bikini-buying spree.
[2][3][4][5] By 1963, the movie Beach Party, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol.
This increasing popularity was reinforced by its appearance in such contemporary films as How to Stuff a Wild Bikini featuring Annette Funicello and One Million Years B.C.
[7] Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida and Jane Russell further helped the growing popularity of bikinis.
Pin up posters of Monroe and Mansfield, as well as Hayworth, Bardot and Raquel Welch distributed around the world contributed significantly to the popularity of the bikini.
They can take place in bars, nightclubs, strip clubs, on beaches, and at beauty pageants, as well as during intermissions of boxing or wrestling matches, and at car shows.
Miss America began as a swimsuit competition between eight contestants in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1921 as National Beauty Pageant Tournament, bikinis were dropped from its list of acceptable swimwear in 1947.
[8] The series was originally intended as a low-budget imitation of both the Elvis Presley musical and the Doris Day sex comedy, aimed at the teen market, but they ended up taking on a life of their own.
[68] One author said, "although she had only three lines in the film, her luscious figure in a fur bikini made her a star and the dream girl of millions of young moviegoers".
[70] When Phoebe Cates dropped her red bikini in teen film Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982),[71] it became "the most memorable bikini-drop in cinema history.
[73] In the 1983 film Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher) wears a metal bikini,[74][75] a slave girl costume often imitated by female fans at Star Wars conventions.
Leia wore high leather boots, a hair fastener that positioned her braided ponytail to cascade over her right shoulder, two bracelets, and a snake arm-wrap.
[78] Actresses fighting in bikinis in movies like Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Blue Crush have made the two-piece, according to Gina Bellafonte of The New York Times, "the millennial equivalent of the power suit.
"[79] The Full Throttle scene showing actress Demi Moore walking out of the ocean wearing a bikini was credited with reviving her career.
[80] In the film Varsity Blues (1999), Ali Larter attempts to seduce James Van Der Beek sporting a "bikini" made of whipped cream over her otherwise naked body.
The promotional cinema poster for For Your Eyes Only (1981), the twelfth spy film in the James Bond series, featured a woman holding a crossbow photographed from behind in a bikini bottom with half of her buttocks exposed.
[81] The poster caused some furor – largely in the US – with The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times edited out everything above the knee,[82] while the Pittsburgh Press editors painted a pair of shorts over the legs.
[90] At the MTV Video Music Award (VMA) in 2013, pop stars Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus appeared on stage in bikinis.
[100] For the original Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, magazine editor Andre Laguerre asked fashion reporter Jule Campbell to help find a model.
[101] She found Berlin-born fashion model Babette March and featured her on the cover, wearing a white bikini, wading in the surf on Cozumel, Mexico.
[105][106] In 2006, Maxim magazine created a 33 metres (108 ft) wide vinyl-mesh bikini in the desert of southern Nevada, United States featuring Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives, claiming that it could be seen from outer space.
[107] The Japanese magazine Young Animal (Yangu Animaru) includes color pinup photos of teenage girls in bikinis (generally pop stars and gravure idols).
Rulah, Jungle Goddess, a comic book character created by Matt Baker for Fox Feature Syndicate, wore a bikini made from the skin of a dead giraffe.
[121][122] In Nissim Ezekiel's one act Indian English moral play The Song of Deprivation, the protagonist becomes a "different woman altogether" as she takes off her bikini and gets into a sari.
Though the campaign generated widespread interest, the advertisements were dropped after protests by the National Organization for Women and female employees of the Pabst Brewing Company.
[138] Liana K, the Canadian co-host of Ed & Red's Night Party and well-known cosplayer appeared at 2008 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo dressed in Princess Leia's slave girl outfit.
[147][148] In 2009, Southwest Airlines of United States ran a Boeing 737 with a picture of swimsuit model Bar Refaeli wearing a bikini painted on the fuselage.
[175] In Sip 'n Dip Lounge, USA, female entertainers swim in a pool dressed up as mermaids (wearing bikini tops), and can be viewed through the bar's glass walls.
[191] Bikini car washes are warm-weather events which serve as fund raisers for a school, sport association (such as roller derby[192] or auto racing[citation needed]), youth organization or charity, or as commercial promotion.
Users of the 4chan board "/b/" posted manipulated images, fake celebrity testimonials, and other content relating to bikini bridges on social networks such as Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter.
