Articles and bikini news about women’s swimwear

Skin Care Tips After Sunbathing

After a day at the beach or lounging by the pool, you all know the feeling you have when you return back home. You want to get out of your bathing suit and get into a hot shower.

The hours you have just spent in the sun, although enjoyable, have created havoc on your skin and you now need to take care of your skin.

Try to avoid taking a long shower or bath. Hot water will tend to dry your skin out even more.

It is recommended to gently pat your skin dry with a towel instead of rubbing your skin to dry off. By doing this you will permit moisture to penetrate the skin better.

Use a hydrating lotion on your skin before you are completely dry, so that your damp skin will allow the moisturizer to penetrate deeper into your skin. You may also use any good lotions on the market that are specifically formulated to take care of your skin after a day sunning.

If you plan to go back out in the sun, to do some shopping or for dinner ,do not forget to apply a light SPF lotion over your face, in order to keep your face wrinkle free.

More Skin Care Tips

Fitness

When one grows older, extra weight may accumulate under the neck, chin and cheeks, resulting in your skin looking older. The skin around the thighs, buttocks, abdomen and calves will give you an older look if they carry excess fat. The appearance of your skin may greatly improve if you eat a balanced nutrition and exercise. It is essential to drink the proper amount of water to keep your skin looking younger. By maintaining improved muscle tone and improved circulation you may enjoy younger looking skin. Liposuction is one other method of removing excess fat for that younger looking skin.

Smiling

Your face typically may conform to the expression or position that one carries most of the time. Your skin is more likely to develop wrinkles or lines between the eyes and down turning lines at the corners of the mouth. If you tend to smile, this is good for your face and will help keep your skin looking younger. By sleeping on your face you may cause sleep wrinkles and by sleeping in the same position most of the night for years can permanently crease your skin. Try sleeping on your back with a small pillow under your lower back area, to reduce the chance of developing sleep wrinkles.

Skin Care

To maintain younger looking skin you should care for your skin on a constant basis. There are several products on the market today that tend to show improvements in aged skin. Even though Retin-A® has proven to improve the appearance of ones skin over time, it has shown to cause skin irritation, sun sensitivity, peeling and to acquire it you would need a medical prescription. Another product that appears to achieve very good results in giving your skin a younger look is Alpha Hydroxy Acids, which lacks most of the irritating side effects that other prescription products do not promise.

History of the Teeny Weeny Bikini

An itsy-bitsy history of the teeny weeny bikini 1946-2003: from the voluptuous screen stars of yesteryear to today's toned and buff surfer girls, a retrospective of our bodies and the bikini - Essential Guide to Summer

It's hard to imagine you can attribute so much meaning to so little fabric, but it's true -- the bikini has spent the last 57 years showing off the female body in all its glory, from the hourglass figures of the '50s to the athletic abs of the '90s and beyond. "Since the beginning, the bikini has represented freedom, fun and a sense of liberation," says New York City-based swimsuit designer Malia Mills.

That sense of fun was just what French engineer Louis Reard decided his countrymen needed after the grim years of World War II. In 1946 he had the simple but scandalous idea of splitting the swimsuit in two. Needing a name as explosive as his creation, Reard borrowed "bikini" from the Pacific atoll where the United States was testing early atomic bombs. The bikini wasn't immediately embraced -- in fact, Reard had to hire a nude dancer to debut it, since no reputable French fashion model would.

Scandalous though it was, the sexy suit slowly infiltrated American beaches and pool parties, and by the late '50s and '60s the soft, curvy figures of Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot were the idealized bikini bodies. In 1964 the bikini made its first appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated; that same year, mod designer Rudi Gernreich took the two-piece concept one step further with his topless "monokini." A minor hit in Europe, the R-rated suit never made a big splash on American shores.

By the '70s, American women were catching up with the Europeans' more daring attitudes. At the same time, swimsuit designers were discovering Lycra, a stretch fiber that allowed them to stitch tinier pieces of fabric, yet still provide support. The result: The string bikini -- with more string than fabric -- was born. The daring young women of Rio de Janeiro and St Tropez went even further -- forgoing all rear-view coverage to show off their assets in the "Tonga" (what we Americans know as the thong).

From Curves to Crunches

The fitness boom of the '80s led to one of the biggest leaps in the evolution of the bikini, Mills observes: "The leg line became super high, the front was super low, and the straps were super thin. That was the era of aerobics and Jane Fonda, and women really wanted to show off their bodies."

But as skin-cancer awareness grew and a sleeker, simpler aesthetic defined fashion in the '90s, the skimpy bikini practically dropped off the radar. By that time, the voluptuous figure that looked so good in tiny triangles was out; athletic, toned bodies became the ideal, as epitomized by surf star Malia Jones, who appeared on Shape's June 1997 cover wearing a halter-top two-piece built for rough water.

Today, bikinis are back with vengeance: Just witness Halle Berry's bikini moment in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day, an homage to her Bond Girl predecessor, Ursula Andress, in 1962's Dr. No. This time around, though, there's no one ideal "bikini figure." Mills says that women of all shapes are discovering that two pieces just fit better, no matter their body shape. "We find that very few women come into our stores and say, '1 can't wear a two-piece,'" says Mills, who sells tops and bottoms separately to provide the perfect fit. "Women today are very liberated in how they feel about their bodies and comfortable with who they are, and they want to show it!"

e American Fashion

From Curves to Crunches