All those "shocking" pictures in 1946 sure created an association with female pudenda and mamaries that really belonged to the shocking and frightening images and other information coming back from Bikini Atoll. Who, I wonder, made the editorial decisions to publicize a garment that few would dare wear in this country? What were those editors promoting, besides sales of their publications? You did not give us a history of the bikini because you failed to go into the details of that mechanism, a masterpiece of propaganda. You gave us, instead, an entertaining chronology with only the vaguest nod towards the manipulation of the public consciousness achieved by the media of the time, which was also the time of the "new look" that covered and hid, of all things, the ladies' knees. C'mon, Slate. What ever has happened to your sense of irony, contradiction, and context?