The first bikini was performed by a dancer in a nightclub.

Ordinary mannequins, as models were still called back then, feared for their reputation if they had presented the creation of the French Louis Réard.

A piece of clothing that exposes the belly button - that was not the right thing to do in 1946.

Julia Anton

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET

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    The bikini has seen a lot since it was invented 75 years ago.

    Described by the Pope as sinful in 1951, he had his first film appearance a year later, carried by Brigitte Bardot, who was only 17 years old at the time.

    He made Ursula Andress an icon in 1962 when she appeared in the James Bond film “Dr.

    No “got out of the water in a white bikini.

    In the course of the sixties and seventies, the once scandalous two-parter finally became a symbol of liberation and emancipation during the sexual revolution.

    And today?

    No bikini without a bikini figure

    The bikini has left its scandalous image behind, today it is more the burkini that stirs the mind. But the bikini has also quickly lost its emancipatory radiance. In the seventies, the Bikini Art Museum in Bad Rappenau documents, the first advertisements with models in bikinis were published: For cars, batteries, drinks and cigarettes. There was no reference to the content of the bikini model in relation to the advertised product, it was at most a “kind of decoration”, as it is called in the museum - the saying “sex sells” persists.

    Instead, the bikini seems to represent stress today. If you ask around in changing rooms in swimwear stores, in addition to the search for the right two-piece suit, the bikini figure is always omnipresent - or, more precisely, its supposed absence. In Germany, the average woman wears size 42 to 44, and she often tries on the bikini next to an advertising poster with a slim model. Brands like Victoria's Secret have helped shape the ideal of a woman with a flat stomach and wrinkle-free legs. The fact that the models often only nourished themselves on juice for days before the recordings and the pictures have been edited - a free gift. Instagram has reinforced this image, and the word bikini figure already resonates: If you want to lie on the beach in a two-piece suit, you first have to work out a normal body.

    In Bad Rappenau they want to break with this picture.

    “As a museum, it is very important to us to defend ourselves against the ideal of beauty of supposed perfection.

    Every woman and every person has the right to wear a bikini if ​​he or she wants to, ”says Alexandra Regiert, who heads the museum's forum on Sexism contra Liberation.

    The exhibition also shows models beyond the norm, with the most varied of body shapes, and swimwear labels that design bikinis for women who, for example, have had a mastectomy.

    "We want to stimulate a discourse about what freedom means in relation to physicality and where limits have to be set."

    Bikini as a mirror of social developments

    But if the bikini is used to sexualise women and put pressure on them in terms of their figure - wouldn't it be time to say goodbye to them? For example, the makers of the Miss Germany election have been doing without the bikini presentation for three years. Regiert does not think that turning away is necessary: ​​"The bikini is comfortable, affordable, and enables a tanned complexion that is still perceived as attractive." to wear a one-piece on the beach - parallel to the first wave of the women's movement, it only caught on in the early 20th century.

    "Swimwear is always a mirror for social developments," says Regiert. At the Janara Swimwear Award, which honors the best swimwear collections every year, the Brazilian label "Fernando Cozendey", which has developed a bikini for men, was recently honored. The bikini thus reflects the gender debate and the blurring of gender lines. In general, society is currently moving in a direction in which values ​​instead of physicality are the focus.

    This is slowly becoming apparent in advertising and on Instagram.

    Influencer Anna-Maria Damm recently posted a photo of herself in a bikini, in which she did without slimming poses and tummy tucks.

    “Every body, no matter what shape, is beautiful and should simply be normalized more in society,” wrote the 25-year-old.

    The photo received significantly more "likes" than her other posts.

    This year, H & M's summer campaign also includes plus-size models.

    When large corporations jump on such trends, it is always ambivalent, says Regiert.

    After all, more sizes also meant more customers.

    "Basically, however, it is to be assessed positively when the image of supposed perfection is broken up."

    And who knows: maybe the bikini will soon stand for diversity.