The headline beamed the bikini trends of 2023 right into my insecurities. Mermaid motifs! Lots of twists! Glittery fabrics! The return of the halter! One shoulder! The twists and one shoulder would suit my scoliosis and the halter would suit my delightful small boobs but a glittery mermaid motif bikini? Nope. 

I loved the Hot Girl Summer memes from a few years back and applauded – from the privacy of my own phone – everyone in bikinis being unapologetically themselves, but not for me. I’ve been a one-piecer since pushing two babies out. 

But what if it's not about any kind of body in a bikini this summer, but the very thing itself?

The bikini’s origin story makes my terrifically twisted spine sit up and listen, and my navel roar with a long primal scream.

When it first appeared in the mid-1940s, the bikini was a giant Up Yours, albeit in three small triangles, to the USA conducting the world’s first nuclear bomb testing on a ring of coral islands in the central Pacific Ocean. 

French designer, Louis Réard, created the g-string bikini – yes the first bikini was a g-banger – with fabric printed with newspaper headlines of what the US was up to. Twenty-three nuclear bombs were tested on the area over the next 12 years contaminating the soil and water and rendering fishing and subsistence farming too dangerous for the indigenous population, who eventually had to relocate.

The beautiful reef, which is said to still be radioactive today, is called Bikini Atoll. 

The three small triangles were a protest.

The name was an audacious objection. 

Knowing it would spark controversy, Réard had struggled to find a model who would wear his radioactive outfit, until French dancer, Micheline Bernardini, sashayed in. Bernardini, at 19, agreed to don it at Réard’s fashion show in Paris, on July 5, 1946.

Headlines roared. But not about the message on the fabric.

People were appalled about the exposure of flesh. The bikini was banned in many countries including Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. 

The Pope called the bikini ‘sinful’, incensed by the sight of belly buttons. That wicked, corrupt, unholy of things: the navel. That spot where those outrageous things called umbilicus feed and nourish us when we’re growing inside our mother’s womb. That puckered spot that reminds us where life begins. And the power of women's bodies.

It was a bold and daring middle finger to the patriarchy to put a bikini on. It was scandalous and liberating. It was emancipation in the smallest amount of cloth possible. 

The bikini was a bicephalous protest against nuclear testing and its devastating effects on humans and our planet, and rules around women’s bodies. It was pushing back against the cardi-wearing, pantyhose-hoisting ‘be modest with your legs crossed at all times’ brigade.

In the 50s, the National Legion of Decency – who sound like fun people to have over for a key party – lobbied to ban bikinis from screens. Then Ursula Andress detonated their prudish ideas in the infamous white bikini in the first Bond film, Dr No. in 1962. 

No to your decency rules and regulations.

No to telling women they can’t show their navels.

No to telling women what to wear and how to be and to hide our sexuality.

Harper's Bazaar columnist and future Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, called the bikini in 1946 “the most important thing since the atom bomb”.

By the mid-60s over half the young set, as they were described by Time magazine, wore bikinis. By the 90s, 50 years on from Bernardini’s strut around the swimming pool, nobody considered bikinis scandalous and taboo. The legion of decency had hung up their hosiery.

However, alongside all the liberation and belly button admiration, bikinis soon became another way to judge women's bodies, to fetishise and sexualise, and for women to judge their own bodies. It became all about the skin and bones and flesh in between the pieces of fabric, not what it represented. 

The incredibly unhelpful Bikini Body or Summer Body emerged which is really a way to sell products to try and get said body. As if bodies can be brought from a can, like hairspray.

These poisonous tropes still sneak in now, with headlines like ‘Look your best for summer’. The trend of getting a Bikini Body hasn’t shrivelled into underwater oblivion. But we live in hope. 

As summer approaches I’m feeling pretty proud of the bikini. 

When I think about those heavy woollen sacks women used to have to swim in during the 1800s, where weights were often sewn into the hems so the fabric didn’t float up in the water and startle nearby fish with the shocking sight of ankles, knees, or thighs then I feel proud of the bikini. 

If I think my curvy spine shouldn’t show itself in a one-shouldered bikini then I’m feeding ableist attitudes that any kind of difference needs to be hidden.

If I think my postpartum body needs to change before appearing in a halterneck bikini, I’m feeding capitalism and the idea there’s only one kind of body for summer. 

Instead of questioning whether any body could or should show their powerful navel in a mermaid motif glitter bikini, think about the bikini’s herstory. 

If you choose to don one this summer, remind yourself that you are wearing something that was once banned. By wearing it, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants who came before you, before all of us, who dared go against the furrowed brows of the National Legion of Decency. Who wore things that were contraband. 

Think about the rebel with a cause designer who wanted everyone to know what was going on in an Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. (If somebody designs bikinis with protest headlines on the triangles – No war! No genocide! No ignoring climate change! We could all strut on down to the waves with a swagger.)

Or think about a 19-year-old rebel in 1946 who said feck it. I’ll wear it. 

It’s time to create a Hot Rebel Summer.