I was thinking about Minnie Pearl’s hat with its tag hanging out on the TV show, Hee Haw. Minnie’s price tag hanging outside on her hat proudly showcased how much she had spent on her straw crown adorned with plastic flowers. Minnie’s comic price tag effect proved satire on small town culture in the Deep South. This thought led me to investigate how bathing attire reflected cultural mores over the eras.

The woman’s swimsuit first emerged in Europe in the 1700s when sea bathing became a popular recreational and healthy activity for both men and women. Before sea bathing was considered healthy culturally, society discouraged women from immersing themselves. Water activity was seen as masculine exercise.

One might think that this new perspective offered a little more freedom for women. There were two designs in this era. The fashionistas of that era called them bathing costumes and bathing gowns. Before bathing costumes, customs dictated that men swim separately from women in the bare.

Martha Washington, the wife of the then Continental Army commander, George Washington, traveled in 1767 and 1769 to the famous mineral springs in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, to absorb the apparent health benefits. She wore a blue and white checked bathing gown with small lead weights sewn into each dress quarter. 

The lead weights were to protect modesty and ensure the gown would not float up and reveal anything taboo, like the lower part of a leg. The design and materials of these first bathing costumes did not allow for much more than wading in water. They were woven in canvas, flannel, and wool.

What Are Bloomers?

The reasoning for using these heavily weighted materials was that they were not transparent when wet, and additionally, they were sturdy. Lead weights were optional. The mid 1800s in the Victorian Era (1837-1891), gave birth to bloomer swimsuits. The ladies donned themselves in these swimsuits sporting belted dresses with full skirts, bloomers cinched below the knees, and balloon sleeves, bell sleeves, or cowl necklines.

The bloomer swimsuit’s namesake is Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894). Amelia was a temperance activist, suffragist, and editor. Amelia also worked as a fashion advocate who endeavored to change women’s clothing styles. Bloomer swimsuits caused controversy, as they were “technically” pants. In polite societies, only men wore pants. Some bloomer designs led to arrests in Europe.

After recognizing the health risks and limitations of corsets and traditional dresses, Amelia advocated for women to embrace a new style of clothing. The loose pants, now known as Bloomers, symbolized a break from conventional women's fashion and soon became associated with women's rights activists. This style faced significant criticism from more conservative men and women.

Again, the first generation of bloomer swimsuit designs and materials were absurdly impractical for swimming like their predecessors. And again, they were sewn from canvas, flannel, and wool. Weighted hems were optional. Coverage continued to take precedence over practicality.

Ladies could choose from brighter colors and patterns with lighter fabrics with the second generation of bloomer swimsuits. Their legs were cut a wee bit higher than before. Yet, vigorous recreational water activities for women continued to be viewed culturally as unladylike.

With Queen Victoria’s passing and the suffragette movement in full swing in the early 1900s, Western women desperately craved for more freedom culturally, physically, and politically. It became socially accepted for men and woman to swim together. Several factors may have led to the approval of the one-piece bathing suit.

The One-Piece

Boston, Massachusetts, holds the title of building the first swimming pool in the U.S. Even though Pakistan built the first recorded man-made swimming pool called the Great Bath of Mohenjodaro, around 2600 B.C., the Western European and American countries were far busier building their empires to think about pools and bath houses by 1800 A.D.

Boston’s Cabot Street Bath combined a bath house and with two separate pools, one for men and one for women. Boston built the pool in 1868 in a working class neighborhood because lower wage earner’s homes rarely had indoor baths. The Cabot Street Bath’s purpose was to help working men maintain cleanliness. The result--97% of this pool’s swimmers were children.

The 1896 Olympic Games sponsored swimming races, and people became aware of the concept of man-made swimming pools globally. The filtration methods and chlorination technology improved at the turn of the 20th century. Brown University first attempted to use chlorine to sterilize pools in 1910.

By the 1910s, the silent movies were the rage, and the talkies followed with the first ever feature-length movie with The Jazz Singer, released by Warner Bros. on October 6, 1927. Pop culture media plastered the lifestyles of the first iconic Hollywood stars all over the world.

Swimming pools did not become popular with wealthier U.S. home owners until after WWII, but swimming pools were fabulously trendy in Hollywood by the 1920s. The rise of women’s sports popularity began in the first 20 years of the 1900s--possibly inspired by the 1896 Olympic Games.

As swimming gained popularity as a recreational activity for men and women, one-piece swimwear evolved and became more stylish. In the early 1900s, form-fitting swimsuits rose in demand, partially influenced by Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer, film actress, and pioneer in synchronized swimming.

Most male and female pro competitors wore one-piece swimsuits that exposed their arms and legs by the 1930s. Then came WWII with pin-up girls, and post-war 1946, a pivotal year in the evolvement of women’s bathing attire. This caused quite a global stir. Some countries banned bikinis at the time, which, contributed to the bikini’s popularity.

The Bikini

In July 1946, French engineer and fashion designer Louis Réard introduced the modern bikini. Women who rolled up their swimsuit hem-edges to get a better tan inspired his risqué bathing suit for women. Réard's bikini consisted of four small fabric triangles held together by string.

Louis named his design after Bikini Atoll, a small ring-shaped coral reef out in the middle of ocean-nowhere between the Philippines and Mexico’s southwestern coast in the Sea of Okhotsk. Speedo introduced its first revolutionary nylon men’s swimming shorts at the 1956 Olympics. Women’s Speedo swimwear was soon to track in those masculine nylon footsteps.

We all know of the explosion of swimwear, exercise wear, sportswear, and all other kinds of wear, after the bikini,  including the hideously ugly yoga pants frenzy that women cannot seem to give up (because they are so comfortable and easy to get in and out of as a busy woman). I must retract. Yoga pants look wonderful on young women, as do bikinis...

As summer ends, and we lake lubbin’, discount huntin’ ladies look at the swimsuit sales each September, everywhere, in stores and online, please remember the bathing costumes woven of canvas!