Jessica Rey - The evolution of the swim suit

I'm sure you've all heard that song before
and I apologize if it gets stuck in anyone's head for the rest of the day. But, I am wondering,
if you've ever really listened to the lyrics, because until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never
really listened to them before, so I'd like to review some of them with you. The first
verse goes, She was afraid to come out of the locker
She was as nervous as she could be She was afraid to come out of the locker
She was afraid that somebody would see The song continues, with her being afraid
to come out in the open, so she hides in her blanket, and then, she was afraid to come
out of the water, so she starts to turn blue. Why was this woman, so afraid? This song was
released in 1960, fourteen years after the bikini was invented in France.

French engineer,
Louis Reard invented the bikini, he worked in his mother's lingerie shop and he named
it after the site of the atomic bomb testing that year Bikini Atoll. He thought that the publics' reaction would
be like an atomic bomb explosion. And, he was right. His design was based on exposing
the belly button for the first time.

And he said, it wasn't the true bikini unless it
could be pulled through a wedding ring. It was so scandalous that no French model would
wear it. So he had to hire a stripper to debut his bikini. Before Reard invented the bikini women wore
one piece swimsuits, like this, or if they were two piece swimsuits, they were still
very modest, exposed very little midriff and always cover the belly button.

Before that,
at the turn of the century women wore this voluminous bathing costumes, and they use
things called bath machines, which were like a 6x6x6 wooden or canvas hut on wheels, the
women would get inside of the bathing machine in her cloths, and then she would change into
her bathing costume. And horses or sometimes people would drag the bathing machine down
to the shoreline, and then women would get straight into the water. So that no one would
see here in her bathing costume. We have certainly come a long way, since then
from practically wearing a house of 36 square feet to wearing about 36 square inches of
fabric.

You go to the beach today and it seems like everyone is wearing a bikini, but it
was not an instant hit in the United States. It was seen as a suspect garment favored by
licentious Mediterranean types. In 1957, Modern Girl magazine said, "it was
hardly necessary to waste words on the so called bikini, because no girl with the tact
or decency would ever wear such a thing. And one writer described the bikini as a two piece
bathing suits that revealed everything about a girl expect her mothers' maiden name.

Guards
at the beach would measure bathing suits and women wearing bikinis were sure to get kicked
off of the beach. So, it's no wonder that the girl on the song
was afraid to come out of the water. With 1960s however, came the sexual revolution
and the women's movement and the rising popularity of the bikini. Soon no one was afraid to wear
one.

And in 1965, a women told Time magazine, that it was almost square not to. Last year
alone annual spending on the bikini totaled $8 billion. The popularity of the bikini has
been attributed to the power of women, not the power of fashion. And a New York Times
reporter called the bikini, the millennial equivalent of the power suit.

So I'd like to take a couple of minutes to
examine this so called power that wearing the bikini brings. A few years ago, male college students at
Princeton University participated in studies of how the male brain reacts to seeing people
in different amounts of clothing. Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures
of scantily-clad women, the region of the brain associated with tools, such as screwdrivers
and hammers lit up. Some men showed zero brain activity in the
medial prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that lights up when one ponders
another person's thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

Researchers found that shocking, because they
almost never see this part of the brain shutdown in this way. And a Princeton professor said, "It is as
if they're reacting to these women as if they're not fully human. It's consistent with the
idea that they are responding to these photographs, as if they were responding to objects, not
people. In a separate Princeton study, when men viewed
images a women in bikinis, they often associated with first person action verbs such as: "I
push", "I grab", "I handle".

But when they saw images of women dressed modestly, they
associated them with third person action verbs, such as "she pushes", "she grabs". Analyst at the National Geographic concluded
the bikinis really do inspire man to see women as objects as something to be used rather
than someone to connect with. So, it seems that wearing a bikini does give a women power,
the power to shutdown a man's ability to see her as a person, but rather as an object. This is surely not the kind of power that
women were searching for, the power to be treated as an equal to be seen as in control
and to be taken seriously.

It seems that the kind of power they are searching for is more
attainable, when they dress modestly. But now comes the problem of modesty. The very word, modesty is often met with such
disdain especially among the younger high school crowd. I remember speaking to a group
of teenagers in New York and when I mentioned modesty, this girl yelled from the back, "What
am I supposed to dress like then, a grandma? And I was scared, but I have to admit, I thought
the same thing when I first learned about modesty.

I thought it meant, "I had to be
frumpy and dumpy and out of fashion". And, I imagine myself wearing dresses like this,
sitting alone in my living room, never going on another date, ever again and never getting
married, and I was particularly frustrated when shopping for a swimsuit, when I decided
not to wear bikinis anymore, because all I. Could find were things that my grandmother
would actually wear. Instead of being discouraged I took matters
into my own hands and I designed my own swimsuit, and the first time I wore it, a few girls
asked, where I got it, and the second time a few more and so on and so forth.

So, I decided
to put my MBA to use, which made my parents so happy, and just start my own swimsuit company. My goal is to disapprove the age old notion,
that when it comes to swimsuits, less is more and that you can dress modestly without sacrificing
fashion. My inspiration for my swimsuit line is Audrey
Hepburn, who is timeless and classy and who happened to have dressed very modestly. I
don't think people would think of Audrey Hepburn and think frumpy and dumpy and out of fashion.

These are some of my designs and my tag line
is "Who says it has to be itsy bitsy?" Well to answer the question, if you look at today's
society everyone, everyone says, "It has to be itsy bitsy", fashion designers, the media,
and let's face it sometimes parents. Little girls would not be running around in
sexy underwear and skimpy bikinis, if it wasn't for their parents buying them for them. I believe that the woman was afraid to come
out of the water, because she had a natural sense of modesty about her. That has been
stripped away by today's culture.

And, we need to bring it back. I have dedicated a lot of my time, I travel
all over the country speaking to girls about this issue. I've just written a book called
'Decent Exposure' about it. And, we need to teach girls that modesty isn't
about covering up our bodies because they're bad, modesty isn't about hiding ourselves,
it's about revealing our dignity.

We were made beautiful in his image and likeness,
so the question I'd like to leave you with is, how will you use your beauty? Thank you..