Before itsy-bitsy, yellow polka-dotted bikinis detonated on American beaches, women had few options for what they sported in the water. The standard bathing suit for a woman at the turn of the 20th century was around nine yards of wool or flannel that covered everything but her head.<\/p>\n
Marilyn Morgan, a manuscript cataloger in the Schlesinger Library<\/a> at the Radcliffe Institute<\/a>, is studying the history of bathing suits in America, uncovering lots of secrets \u2014 and skin \u2014 along the way.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a project that began more than a decade ago when Morgan was a doctoral student in history writing her dissertation. While researching, Morgan was scouring newspapers when she noticed something peculiar: front-page articles devoted to women swimmers.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was in the mid-1920s,\u201d she recalled. \u201cSo these women swimmers had Babe Ruth to contend against, and the boxer Jack Dempsey, and yet there were more front-page articles on women swimmers than on Babe Ruth.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan had never heard of these sportswomen, aside from Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. \u201cYou don\u2019t read about this when you read women\u2019s history,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just not there.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet swimming was advertised as the sport for women, which I found so interesting. Newspapers said women were just naturally better at it. They thought it was this pure form of activity because women weren\u2019t sweating, they weren\u2019t grunting, and you couldn\u2019t see their bodies in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n Her book in progress, titled \u201cBeauty at the Beach: Marathon Swimmers, the Media, and Gender Roles in American Culture, 1900-1940,\u201d examines not only the evolution of bathing suits but also this pioneering troupe of female long-distance swimmers who became a media sensation at a time when other female athletes \u201cwere criticized for being too muscular,\u201d said Morgan.<\/p>\n Women would even compete against men, according to Morgan. \u201cFirst they covered themselves in seven pounds of lard because the waters were so cold,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Morgan\u2019s book also will cover topics ranging from the development and marketing of women\u2019s swimwear to the roles that female swimmers played in women\u2019s suffrage. She\u2019s also interested in the emergence of bathing suits in Hollywood and their appearance in the Miss America pageant (which caused it to be \u201cshut down in 1927 for being too risqu\u00e9,\u201d Morgan noted), and on \u201cLearn to Swim\u201d campaigns, which swept the country promoting swimming as a \u201cdesirable activity for women.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven at Radcliffe College,\u201d said Morgan, \u201cevery woman had to swim to be able to graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n