Bikini

Bikini

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.

Etymology and terminology

![Operation Crossroads was a nuclear test series at the Bikini Atoll, and the inspiration for the naming of two French swimsuit designs at the time, including the bikini.](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Ablecrossroads.jpg/250px-Ablecrossroads.jpg)

Etymology and terminology

It has been frequently cited as a major example of a "psychological link between atomic destruction and sexuality" in popular culture, which includes the stenciling of Rita Hayworth onto one of the bombs detonated at Crossroads, and its persistence in language has been argued as having "trivialized and downplayed the reality of nuclear testing," given the contamination done by especially later US thermonuclear tests at Bikini and other Marshallese atolls.

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