Saturday night as I enjoyed the Miss San Pedro Beauty, Elegance, Talent, Courage, and Intelligence Pageant, I could not help but recall to mind the use of swimsuits twenty five years ago. I noticed how those lovely young ladies modeled in swimsuits with so much poise. They seemed so comfortable; I bet some people in the audience were more nervous than them. I asked two friends of mine, two ladies who are over their fifties and who had themselves participated in a Miss San Pedro Pageant if they remembered their time on stage. “Yes, certainly”, they said, “but not in swimsuits.”
Anybody who is fifty years old or over, can certainly recall that swimsuits were not worn with such ease and casualness back then as they are worn today. Today swimsuits and even bikinis are worn at the beach, by the pool side, on the streets, and even on a stage. Certainly not so in the 1960’s not 70’s. Girls wore a swimsuit under their dresses. In groups of three or four they would go to the beach and walk into the sea up to knee height. By then the boys knew they were there to swim and were anxious to enjoy the spectacle of beautiful ladies exposing their lovely legs. But they had to endure the anxiety and forget the spectacle.
The girls would walk further out and deeper into the sea. As they went deeper, they raised their dresses until it was just above the waist. At this point, when the lower half of their bodies were submerged under water, then and only then they removed their dresses and took a dive. They would place their dresses on a pier or someone would take them to the beach, taking care, of course that she would not expose too much of her body. At the whistling of the guys, they would teasingly and now comfortable dive under water and proceed to have a good hour of fun in the sea. Once in a while, and only one or two of them, they would climb up a pier and take a dive. As the years went by, they all picked up the courage to climb into a friend’s skiff in their swimsuits and went for a jolly ride amid shouts and laughter and the delight of the boys in the skiff.
What was wrong with them, you might ask? Nothing! It was simply not the culture. Girls were just more conservative. Exposing the body so freely was something that had not come as a way of life as it is today. Nothing wrong; nothing bad then and now- just different.
– by Angel Nuñez, Columnist
