“Itsy Bitsy, Teeny Weeny, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”: Song of the Day for July 5

As silly as the song of the day may sound, it explains a lot about the prudish attitudes towards sex in the United States in 1960, when the song first appeared.

On July 5, 1946, the world saw the bikini for the first time in Paris, but it would be a few more decades before it became a common sight on America’s beaches.

French designer Louis Reard created the bikini using 30-inch fabric, but when he tried to show it off at a poolside fashion show, models were too intimidated to wear it. He found Michelle Bernardini, a 19-year-old dancer at a nude club, who was willing and able to do it.

He came up with the idea for the name because the USA was conducting nuclear bomb tests on Bikini Atoll a few days before his show. He considered his event “as significant as the new bomb”.

At the beginning of the 20th century, women went to the beach fully clothed. Slowly they began to remove several layers of clothing, and by the 1940s some women were wearing two-piece suits, although the navel was never visible.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s opened the dressing rooms to bikinis. In 1967, the US Time magazine reported that 65 percent of young people wore them. They have never lost their popularity.

Our song of the day shows what the mood was like in 1960. The woman in the song is wearing a bikini for the first time and is afraid to come out of the changing room, then outside and finally out of the water.

For Bryan Hyland, the song was a million-seller and reached number one on the Billboard 100 charts in August 1960. The song also reached number one in France and Germany.

Song of the Day was created by Sheldon Zoldan and produced by Pam James for WGCU. To receive Song of the Day in your inbox every day, email [email protected] with the subject line “ADD ME TO SOTD”.