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The
paranoia over personal safety as well as the strict
segregation of male and female bathers eventually passed,
and by the turn of the century desegregated bathing
was common, particularly at seaside resorts. Still,
bathing apparel for women was only
somewhat less voluminous than everyday street wear.
Martin and Koda explain that the "long civil war
of swimwear" went on for nearly three decades.
In the early years of the twentieth century, women began
to reveal their arms; by the 1920s the war intensified
over the progressive revelation of women's legs; and
by the 1930s the primary change in swimwear was that
men began to go without shirts.
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The
one-piece bathing suit, which had been popularized by the champion
swimmer and later star of vaudeville and motion pictures, Annette
Kellerman, was legally banned in some parts of the country.
Kellerman herself was arrested for indecent exposure when she
first appeared in her "body stocking" style suit at
Boston's Revere Beach in 1908, and responses toward her attire
would not have been much different in many places throughout
the United States until late in the 1920s. Not only was the
sleek Kellerman-style suit physically freeing compared with
the bulky yards of fabric in which women had formerly "bathed,"
but it was specifically problematic in that it quite clearly
revealed the contours of the female figure. The suit was doubly
offensive to some when stockings were eliminated or were not
worn according to regulations, which usually meant they were
rolled below the knees. In any case, the "Annette
Kellerman," or more simply, the one-piece bathing costume,
was considered the most daring kind of bathing apparel and therefore
became the focus of many censorship efforts, not to mention
sarcastic
innuendo.
 
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