Bikinis are for honeymoons. Or so I was told as a child when I asked my mom why I couldn’t get a two-piece bathing suit like everyone else. “Only your husband should see your body like that. That’s the way God made it,” my mom told, continuing to fold the laundry.
The assumption is absurd now, but then, at four or five, I shrugged and went back to wearing my Lion King one-piece without complaint. If God made my body - my abdomen, mind you in this scenario - for only my husband to see, who I was to argue?
It’s now 20 years later, and I have finally purchased a bikini. Not just a tankini - only a two-piece in name and not in appearance - or a bikini with a high-waisted bottom so that only two inches of skin show, but a real one, with the bottom piece hugging my hip bones and the top staying up thanks to tight elastic, and an optional halter strap.
To most, it seems rather ridiculous for a 24-year-old woman to write about purchasing a bikini. But also admittedly ridiculous are the conservative and fundamentalist-leaning Christian teachings I grew up with.
Any personal story of experiencing purity culture in the 1990s would be incomplete without citing Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye. While largely focusing on choosing courtship over dating, Harris makes note of the “girl’s responsibility” in a section titled Purity in Action. After noting that guys “wrestle more with our sex drives,” and that they “struggle with our eyes,” he exhorts girls: “Now I don’t want to dictate your wardrobe, but honestly speaking, I would be blessed if girls considered more than fashion when shopping for clothes. Yes, guys are responsible for maintaining self-control, but you can help by refusing to wear clothing designed to attract attention to your body.”
He continues: “I know many girls who would look great in shorter skirts or tighter blouses, and they know it. But they choose to dress modestly. They take the responsibility of guarding their brothers’ eyes.”
In conservative evangelical Christianity, the kind espoused by Harris and those over at organizations like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, women are gatekeepers of sexuality. They tell women that, while we may not have the same sexual drive or the ability to be visually stimulated, we are responsible for keeping the sexuality of men in check. Nevermind that we live in a world where Peggy Lee crooned over the body of The Boy from Ipanema” or that women clapped over Harrison Ford undressing in his office during in the 1988 film Working Girl, let alone that Magic Mike, the 2011 film about male strippers, and its 2015 sequel Magic Mike XXL exist. Women can be visual and sexual too.
Instead, Christian girls and women are told that we are “secret-keepers”; that we have the power to beguile boys and men with a glimpse of our figures. In a 2006 article in Focus on the Family’s now-shuttered teen girl magazine Brio and Beyond, writer Sue Cameron noted: “Be wise and understand that when you emphasize your figure with clingy tops, tight jeans, plunging necklines or bare bellies, you’re not being considerate to guys. How are your youth group guys supposed to focus on Jesus if you and your girlfriends provide tempting images as distractions?”
On the following page was a fashion challenge, otherwise known as a modesty test. While it was purportedly about every day wear, the raise & praise test automatically disqualifies a bikini.
We were supposed to be empowered by this: look at how God has entrusted you with this beautiful body, the teachings told us; you have such power! But I didn’t feel powerful. I felt shy and ashamed. I judged myself and others if jeans were too tight or shirts too low. Eventually, the shame became too much to bear.
It’s not easy to shed the teachings one grew up with. This isn’t to say that I’ve left my faith behind. Rather, as I’ve grown older, matured and left the bubble of private Christian education, I’ve begun to let go of the harmful teachings about my body and the value of “purity.”
It hasn’t been an easy or quick process, as evidenced by the fact that I only bought a bikini last weekend. I had tried earlier this summer, only to be frightened away by the triangle cuts and my paleness glowing under the fitting room lights. Finally, after finding coupons, I determinedly marched into a local mall - on a Sunday no less - with my boyfriend in tow to Victoria’s Secret. It was exciting until I walked up to tables and racks of bathing suits: more triangle cuts, more thongs. I felt an old awkwardness creep up, like when I was in youth group and judged other girls for wearing v-necks or for talking about trips with their boyfriends to Victoria’s Secret. I felt insecure and weird looking up at the images of models happily smiling on the beach, midriffs exposed.
I went across the mall to Old Navy, and found a basic, and relatively unexciting, bikini. Maybe because I was surrounded by everyday clothes without supermodels staring down at me, I felt more at ease.
I don’t think I’ll be quite as carefree as those models appear any time soon, but I’m getting there. I’m slowly getting used to my body - bare abdomen and all - and the fact that I don’t have to wait till my honeymoon to show it.
