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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Comment is free: The bikini: a feminist issue

"The bikini: a feminist issue

Turkey's ban on posters showing women in two-pieces will not stop its emancipated women dressing however they please.

A brief history of the Turkish bikini: nice respectable teenage girls were wearing them in the resorts around Istanbul and Izmir as far back as the 1960s. On "unspoiled" beaches it was not uncommon to attract a mob of staring men in those days, but as more resorts opened up, the bikini followed. By the 1980s, attitudes had relaxed all along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. This was partly because so many millions of Turks had spent time as guest workers in Germany, and partly because many more millions now had television, and their favourite programme was the bikini-studded Dallas."

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