Hey, there! Log in / Register
Formal beachwear
By adamg on Wed, 08/10/2011 - 6:49pm
Leslis Jones photographed a day at Revere Beach in 1920 or thereabouts. Posted in the Boston Public Library's collection of beach photos, which includes scenes of bathing beauties, scamps and crowds at Revere, Nantasket and other local beaches between 1917 and 1934.
Posted under this Creative Commons license.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Once in a while . . .
. . . you can still get a glimpse of this- when some old guy goes to the beach in his wingtips and dark socks up to his knees. I'll probably end up doing it as well- it's a "I don't care- I'm 80" look- and a tradition.
The...horror..!
And I find having to wear a 21st century bathing suit (as required by most US public beaches) to be oppressive..!
Oppressive for you, merciful
Oppressive for you, merciful for us.
Ooh, ouch.
Your wit knows no boundaries, does it?
Dreaming
This is the social conservative's dream. A bunch of fully clothed white people without a whiff of sexuality or moral weakness.
nuh uh
looks like a flash mob that is about to start wilding.
Ugh, I find sand in my
Ugh, I find sand in my sneakers and bathing suit to be a real PITA... just imagine sand in your stiff shoes and hot suit. I love to look at pictures of the 20's and imagine life in the 20's, but if I was around in those days, I'd probably have just lived in Greenland all summer.
Depends where you lived.
There was plenty of sex, drugs and
rock and rolljazz, if you knew where to look.Indeed-
We are drenched in this media image of the past America as being some sort of prude's paradise. It never was. People definitely had more self respect about their personal appearance than we do today and we look at their clothes through the prism of our own times. Construction workers would go to work with ties on under their overalls. People wore those clothes at the beach because there was no sun block back then- and if there was it probably didn't work that well- and getting a sunburn could lead to a fever and . . . yeah- death. And plus- it just wasn't normal for many of the people back then in Mass- with ancestors from wet overcast islands to take their shirts off in public.
My grandmother used to admonish my mother for not wrapping us in six layers of clothes when we went out to play in the snow- cause she grew up in time when kids died regularly from high fevers and other easily treated ailments. Times change.
Yet in this picture which is
Yet in this picture which is some time between 1917 and 1934,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library...
most people are wearing things that would basically be acceptable today.
Not a single lard ass in
Not a single lard ass in sight. Good times.
I guess they were
All riding bikes back then.
Or chariots.
Or chariots.
Yeah, but also nobody at the other extreme
No plastic surgery and no starvation diets, either.
No McDonald's, no Taco Bell,
No McDonald's, no Taco Bell, no Dunkin' Donuts, no malls, not as much to do to entertain oneself when sitting on one's arse like a couch potato... no wonder why people were slim!
HFCS
And there wasn't HFCS in everything then, either.
I love the Leslie Jones photos, but ...
The one thing that's a bit frustrating about them is that most have little to no context with them.
Sometimes, that's actually a good thing, it can lead to discussions like the one about the horses and the trolleys, and sometimes a little Googling gets you some answers (like why would Amelia Earhart be having lunch with the mayor of Medford at the Ritz?). But a lot of times, they just leave you wondering. You're right - that photo collection has tons of photos of people wearing stuff and doing things that wouldn't be too out of place today, so what's the deal with all the suits and long dresses in this photo?
Fashion!
Fashion changed a lot between 1917 and 1934.
Amelia Earhart lived in
Amelia Earhart lived in Medford for a while during the 1920s, so the town had a claim to her fame.
I think they got the date
I think they got the date wrong on that Swampscott picture -- it looks more like the 50's, doesn't it?
Weird, but...
It's just so weird that people would go to the beach like that in the 1920 photo. But, then you look at one of the other photos there dated 1930 and people aren't all covered up like that. Did things change so much in 10 years? Roaring 20's?
It's possible that the
It's possible that the earlier photograph is of some non-bathing event that occured at or in the vicinity of the beach. If you look closely there are some people in more reasonable bathing attire in the water and on the beach in addition to the people in the suits and long dresses and hats in the foreground. I suspect that those in what looks to us like inappropriate beachwear didn't get dressed like that for the beach.
Maybe
But people really did dress formally even at the beach - I've read old newspaper articles that talked about people renting bathing suits at the beach. When the bath house ran out of suits they were stuck in their heavy clothing.
(You can view the articles at bpl.org, e.g. see Boston Globe July 10 1905, with big articles about record heat & photos of people fully dressed at the beach. You have to login using a BPL card so I can't include a link.)
I agree
That was my take on it too- everyone who is dressed up appears to be looking at something off camera- maybe some kind of race?
(and SPF1000 is the perfect name for this thread!)
I think they are all looking
I think they are all looking at the water -- the picture is somewhat skewed...