Brazilian thong becomes a trend in the US after being adopted by Hollywood stars

Codi Maher noticed a few years ago that bikini bottoms were shrinking. “First it was the low-cut bikini, then the thong,” said the 30-year-old real estate agent from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Faced with the disappearance of the fabric covering the women’s bottoms, Maher began to consider buying a thong: “I thought: everyone is wearing it. What the hell, I don’t care.”

Her sister Cassidy, 24, said she started wearing thongs a year or two ago because she thinks it makes her “butt a little better.” And she appreciates the lack of tan lines, an opinion that other women echo. “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable,” she said. “But seeing other women in thongs, I’m starting to feel more self-confident.”

Some people attribute the recent popularity of thongs and thongs to celebrities who wear this style of swimwear, including Emily Ratajkowski, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kate Hudson. Popsugar declared the thong to be Hollywood’s favorite bikini style. “Predict to see lots of tighter thongs, thongs and bikinis,” wrote Rolling Stone.

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, the G-string and thong are different things. The G-string has a thin strip running between the buttocks and connected to the waistband. A thong has a triangle of fabric at the top, covering the space between the buttocks and lower back. Brazilian bikini bottoms are tiny and low-cut, elongating the legs and leaving most of the buttocks exposed. But all these variations point to one thing: exposing skin is in.

Major retailers including Victoria’s Secret and Billabong are featuring thongs and thongs in their 2023 swimwear collections.

The thong has its origins in antiquity, and variations of the piece have already appeared in various parts of the world. But the style was seen in public in the United States for the first time in 1939, before the New York World’s Fair, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia determined that showgirls should be dressed and not completely naked (as was common and, at the same time, controversial at fairs at the time).

The 1939 decree was part of the mayor’s war against displays of “indecency and licentiousness”. In 1937, La Guardia supported the closure of 14 theaters where burlesque shows were staged, prompting the police to close these strip clubs for the first time in the city’s history. The ban was challenged and soon reached the New York Supreme Court, where lawyers for the burlesque clubs tried in vain to compel the city to give them back their operating licenses.

Decades later, on the West Coast, another legal action against displays of nudity led to a breakthrough in swimwear: in 1974, when the Los Angeles City Council banned public nudity, Austrian-American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich responded by 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, but many people are still offended by public nudity”, Gernreich said in a manifesto in the 1970s, citing, according to Vogue, “Brazilian beachwear and the mawashis of sumo wrestlers, as well as strappy sandals” as examples of the style.

The same conflict that Gernreich identified would eventually take the G-string all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The Court ruled on the dental floss in Barnes v. Glen Theater Inc. in 1991 and City of Erie v. Pap’s AM in 2000. In both cases, exotic dancers who wanted to perform nude argued that laws requiring them to wear thongs infringed on their First Amendment rights. But the Supreme Court justices upheld the legislative requirements in decisions that, according to New York University law professor Amy Adler, were “widely criticized for running counter to First Amendment reasoning.”

The Court found female nudity a threat to the social order and defended the G-string as “a solution to crime, disease and lawlessness,” Adler said. According to her, the piece plays with dualities: it is an object that feeds fantasies and also arouses fear, at the same time pointing to female sexuality and hiding it.

In recent years, several North Carolina counties have eased their restrictions and implementation of nudity laws in response to the rise in scantily clad beachgoers (South Carolina counties have yet to follow suit, despite calls to overturn the thong law).

Wearing a thong is legal in most parts of the United States, but laws vary. In Florida, for example, the thong is prohibited in state parks, including some stretches of state beaches.

Regardless of legality, many women say the piece helps them make peace with their bodies. Nikki Sutton, from Atlanta, who has two children, says she ordered a thong before traveling to Puerto Rico because she wanted to feel “sexy for a second.” She said that despite having gained seven kilos recently, she decided to wear the thong because it would force her to be okay with her body the way it was.

“That’s what the thong does for me,” she said. “It empowers me, it forces me to be a little more comfortable in my own skin. I have to walk with a certain level of confidence, whether I feel that way or not.”

Others view style as a double-edged sword. “There are certain body types that are marginalized, quite simply: fat bodies, older bodies, bodies with visible physical disabilities,” commented Celine Leboeuf, assistant professor of philosophy at Florida International University. “There can be something liberating about wearing an outfit that people say you shouldn’t wear because of your body. But then you fall into the other extreme of self-objectification.”

Mari Heredia, a 49-year-old medical technician from Boynton Beach, Fla., said she wore a thong because “I want to tan my butt.” The last time she had used it was 20 years ago when she took a vacation to Cancun. Reflecting on her body today, she said: “I’m fat, but you know what? I have two kids. This is my natural body.”