Codi Maher noticed that bikini bottoms were shrinking a few years back. “First it was a cheeky cut, then Brazilian,” said Maher, a 30-year-old real estate agent in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. As the fabric covering women’s behinds disappeared, she began to think about buying a thong-style bathing suit. own: “I was like, everyone is wearing them, fuck it, I don’t care.”

Her sister, Cassidy, 24, said she started wearing thongs a year or two ago because she believed the cut made her “butt look a little better.” She also likes the lack of tan lines, a sentiment echoed by numerous women. “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable,” Cassidy said. “But I’m starting to feel more confident seeing other women wearing them.”

Some attribute the latest wave of thongs and thongs to celebrities wearing the swimwear style, including Emily Ratajkowski, kim kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kate Hudson. “The thongkini is Hollywood’s favorite swimsuit” popsugar declared. “Anticipate lots of thong, string, and edgy cuts,” Rolling Stone wrote.

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, thongs and thongs are different. Thongs have a thin strap that runs between the buttocks, connected to the waist. A thong, while still offering the T-back look, has a triangle of fabric at the top, covering the space between the buttocks and lower back. Another category called Brazilian panties offer more coverage than thongs; these are tiny and high cut, elongating the leg and exposing most of the buttocks. But all these variations point to one thing: fur is in fashion.

Major retailers including Victoria’s Secret and Billabong offer thong and thong swimwear as part of their 2023 swimwear collections.

While the thong has ancient origins – and iterations of the garment have appeared around the world – the style first appeared publicly in the United States in 1939 before the New York World’s Fair, after the city’s mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, order the showgirls to perform covered instead of completely naked (as are both common and controversial in the fairs of this period). The 1939 term was part of the mayor’s larger war against displays of “filth and lasciviousness”: in 1937, Mr. La Guardia endorsed a citywide ban on 14 burlesque theaters that led to the police shutdown of such strip clubs for the first time in the city’s history. the ban was disputed and it quickly made its way to the New York Supreme Court, where lawyers for the burlesque clubs tried unsuccessfully to force the city to reissue their licenses.

Decades later, on the West Coast, another legal strike against meat displays spurred swimwear innovation: In 1974, when the Los Angeles City Council outlawed public nudity, Austrian-American designer Rudi Gernreich responded inventing the thong bikini.

“The thong is my response to a contradiction in our society: nudity is here; many people want to swim and sunbathe naked; also many people are still offended by public nudity,” Gernreich said in a manifesto in the 1970s, citing, according to Vogue“Brazilian swimsuits, sumo wrestler mawashis, and flip-flops as references” for the style.

The same conflict that Mr. Gernreich identified would eventually propel the thong all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

The court ruled on thongs in the case of Barnes v. Glen Theater Inc. in 1991 and in City of Erie v. Pap’s AM in 2000. In both cases, exotic dancers who wanted to strip completely argued that the laws required them to wear thongs infringed their First Amendment rights. But the justices upheld the legislative requirements, in rulings that are “widely derided as failures in terms of First Amendment reasoning,” according to Amy Adler, a law professor at New York University.

The court found female nudity a threat to social order and upheld the thong as a “solution to crime, disease and chaos,” Adler said. The garment is all about dualities: a thing of “fantasy and dread,” she said, both signaling and hiding a woman’s sexuality.

In recent years, several North Carolina municipalities have loosened restrictions and enforcement of nudity laws to accommodate an increase in scantily clad bathers. (Until now, the municipalities of South Carolina have refused to follow suit, despite calls get rid of thong law.)

For now, the legal dispute over thongkinis appears to be limited to the Carolinas. Thong bikinis are legal in most of the United States, but laws vary by city and county. In Florida, for example, thong bathing suits are prohibited in state parks, including some parts of the state beaches.

Regardless of the legality, many women say that cutting helps them make peace with their bodies. In the past, skimpy swimsuits were often considered the province of women with conventionally “perfect” bodies, but today, women of all shapes and sizes embrace thongs, G-strings, and other barely-there bottoms.

Nikki Sutton, an Atlanta paralegal with two children, explained that she ordered a white thong bikini before a trip to Puerto Rico because she wanted to “feel sexy for a second.” Although she had recently gained 15 pounds, she said, she decided to wear the thong anyway because it would push her out of her comfort zone and force her to be “completely content” with her body exactly as it was, “with every bit of who it was.” . I have things to do: inches, weight, everything.”

“That’s what a thong does to me,” she said. “It’s empowering and forces me to feel a little more comfortable in my skin. I have to walk with a certain level of confidence, whether he feels that way to me or not.”

Ms Sutton said she hoped that her flaunting what she sees as her imperfect body in public would encourage other women to feel comfortable with their own bodies, no matter their shapes or sizes.

Wearing a thong is “liberating,” said Laura DiBiase, a 32-year-old college counselor from Los Angeles, because it symbolizes “taking ownership of your body.” Ms DiBiase said her adoption of the style was tied to her personal fitness journey: as she started going to the gym more, she became more confident and started wearing thong bikinis, which in turn boosted her confidence. .

But some see the style as a double-edged sword.

“There are certain bodies that are just marginalized: fat bodies, older bodies, bodies with visible disabilities,” said Celine Leboeuf, assistant professor of philosophy at Florida International University. “There can be something liberating about reclaiming those clothes that people say you shouldn’t wear because of your body. But then you fall into the other edge of self-objectification.

Mari Heredia, a 49-year-old medical technician from Boynton Beach, Florida, said she wears a thong swimsuit because “I need to get a tan on my butt.”

The last time he wore one, he added, was 20 years ago, during a vacation in Cancun. Reflecting on her body today, she said, “I’m fat, but guess what? I have two sons. This is my natural body.”