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Most
beach censorship was directed specifically at women.
Although women and men enjoyed the nation's public swimming
sites together by the 1920s, men's swimsuit codes, even
if similar to those imposed on women, were not usually
stressed and so received considerable attention when
they were. For example, in Zion City, a small town near
Lake Michigan in the northernmost part of Illinois,
a ruling that men's bathing suits must be long enough
to cover their knees and that a "skirt flapping
over the thighs must be worn" was reported by major
newspapers in both Chicago and New York.
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These
examples of beach censorship and regulation indicate not only
particular concerns about decorum but also more general and
historically grounded anxieties about cultural "playgrounds"
as sites of sexual transgression. In previous eras such worries
were allayed at the nation's beaches in part by segregating
the sexes for swimming and, later, by using "modesty hoods"
to conceal women's bodies. In the 1920s the "beach
censor" who patrolled the shore assumed a primary place
as guardian of public morality when America went swimming. Not
all municipalities, of course, assigned the title of "censor"
to the person(s) whose job it was to regulate behavior at places
designated for public bathing. Whether "copette,"
"tailoress-censor," or simply a police officer, the
job endowed its possessor with considerable authority and sometimes
not insignificant financial remuneration. Certainly, lifeguards
also monitored swimmers, but responsibility for enforcing codes
of conduct was, at least in more heavily utilized locations,
clearly distinct from that of lifesaving.
 
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