Ashley: Bathing suits are made for public viewing, get something you only need a minimal body coverage. Hi, welcome to watchmojo.com I'm your host Ashley and today Cynthia Cooper is going to take us through the changes of the ultimate limits of our veiling.

Cynthia Cooper: Bathing suits are very important in the history of fashion because they are a garment in which one is dressed but not really clothes, one who is wearing enough clothing to be seen in public but not something that would be socially acceptable in any other context, but on the beach.

So, it really shows us the limits of what society is willing to tolerate in terms of exposure of the body. In the late 19th century and the early 20th women wore dresses for bathing with knee lengths pants underneath them. They even wore tights and boots for going in the water, and taking those off to wave just up to knees, was maybe the first -- one of the first moves towards exposing more of the body and bathing suits.

By the 1920s, bathing suits were made out of wool-knits which would have been really clinging when they were wet, and of course the whole idea of what a bathing suit could be changed in the late 1940s with the introduction of the bikini.

This green bathing suit is a style that was recommended by the Catholic Womens League in 1935 when it seemed as if morals had really declined and women were getting away with a whole lot on the beach. So this Catholic Womens League introduced its own, modest bathing suit style.