1952

Sydney showgirl Bettine Baker made news in 1952 when she was led off Bondi Beach by a beach inspector for failing the public decency test in her bikini. Waverley Council’s strict public beach bathing suit rules required full cover of the front torso.

The 20-year-old was walked through beach crowds to provide her details to a smiling policeman, who told her not to return.

The controversial French-designed swimwear began making a splash in 1949 when a bikini-clad model adorned a cover of ‘Australian Post’ magazine. Soon, the bikini began appearing on beaches.

Bettine Baker, aged 20, wore her red and white striped bikini for a few hours at Bondi before she was spotted. Beach inspectors patrolled at the beach, often with a tape measure, enforcing a 1935 Waverley Council ordinance about appropriate swimwear.

Baker told a newspaper: ‘He made me walk through the crowds into the Pavilion and took me up to a man dressed in swim trunks behind a counter.’ The policeman at the counter ‘just grinned and said he noticed me some time before’.

Baker explained that as a showgirl with the famed Queenie Paul’s ‘Sun-kissed Cuties’ troupe, her livelihood depended on her appearance, and she could not have tan lines on her body. She returned to the beach later in the day in the bikini but had trunks rolled high over her torso. The beach inspector let her stay.

Baker told reporters: ‘The whole business is so old-fashioned and narrow-minded it's not even funny. He told me my swimsuit was down to the point of indecency.’

Weeks later, Baker toured Singapore with the ‘Sun-Kissed Cuties’ to mixed reviews in the ‘Straits Times’ newspaper: ‘… the loveliest gaggle of glamour girls ever to high kick at this theatre, but their dancing is far less attractive than their looks.’

Courtesy the National Library of Australia.