ABSTRACT
It is not often that an academic book is inspired by a pair of Speedos. Here is one. As countless postcards, travel shows and holiday brochures tell us, our ideal beach is tropical, sandy and washed over by clear, warm, turquoise-colored waters. Indeed, the scene of ‘paradise on earth’ is deserted, apart from the romantic couple walking arm in arm towards the sunset or the beautiful bikini-clad woman lying on the water’s edge soaking up the sun. Reclining alone, she seduces the viewer through passivity and possibility. She tells us the beach is a space of youthfulness, sexuality, independence, and time spent away from the chaos of everyday life. Crucial to this message is the all-over, carefully cultivated suntan. It is here we need to look closer, as it is in the suntan that we see the beach is not the space of brown skin, but the browning of skin, or, to be more exact, the browning of white skin. As a marker of sexuality, health and youthful vigor, the suntan is the desired coloring of pale, white skin. And so as the swimwear exposes this skin to the sun, it also reveals a series of broader, underlying values. Today’s postcards, brochures, websites and television programs not only carefully define where in the world the ideal beach is to be found, but also who are its actors, or imagined consumers. Tracing the genealogy of these images, and the ideals they convey, quickly reveals their European and North American roots. At the beginning of the twentieth century, social commentators on both continents would express shock and contempt for an emerging trend of exposed, tanned bodies. In the wake of World War I, however, much had changed as seaside resorts in California and Southern Europe established themselves as extremely popular places dedicated to the pursuit of leisure and fun. Recent years have seen a number of books trace this evolution of the beach as a space of leisure and recreation (Len-ek and Bosker 1998; Urbain 2003; Gray 2006). While their titles and introductions promise the definitive story, their accounts focus on beaches in California, the Mediterranean or the north of England. No mention is given to the cultural histories of beaches in Africa, the Middle East or Asia.
