Bikini

A bikini is a women's two-piece swimsuit featuring a top piece covering the breasts, and a bottom piece covering the pelvis (usually excluding the navel) and some or all of the buttocks. The extent covered by both pieces can vary, from those that offer full coverage of the breasts, pelvis, and buttocks, to more revealing designs with thong or G-string bottoms that cover only the mons pubis and intergluteal cleft, and tops that cover only the areolae. Bikini bottoms covering about half of the buttocks may be described as "Brazilian-cut".

The modern bikini swimsuit was introduced by French clothing designer Louis Réard in July 1946, and was named after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had taken place four days before.

Because of its revealing design, the bikini was once considered controversial, facing opposition from a number of groups and being accepted only very slowly by the general public. In many countries, the design was banned from beaches and other public places: in 1949, France banned the bikini from being worn on its coastlines; in the 1950s and 1960s, bikinis were banned in many pools and beaches in West Germany (based on a 1932 decree that only allowed women to swim in public if they wore a swimming costume that completely covered the front of their upper body, including their breasts), and some communist groups condemned the bikini as a "capitalist decadence". The bikini also faced criticism from some feminists, who reviled it as a garment designed to suit men's tastes, and not those of women.

The bikini gained increased exposure and acceptance as film stars like Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, and Ursula Andress wore it and were photographed on public beaches and seen in film. The minimalist bikini design became common in most Western countries by the mid-1960s as both swimwear and underwear. By the late 20th century, it was widely used as sportswear in beach volleyball and bodybuilding.