A comic strip at first glance was simply making fun of the latest swimsuit fashion being ‘too far’. But further inspection shows what a master Ethel Hays was. She was the cartoonist behind daily “Flapper Fanny Says” and most of her work is absolutely timeless. Today was no different.
Ethel" comic strip by Ethel Hays, three panels: 1920, 1925, 1930 — Public Opinion, July 31 1926
The strip walks through three points in time. In 1920, a sign bans two-piece suits "by order of the purity squad," and the woman on screen, in a fully covered outfit with long stockings, still draws disapproving looks from onlookers who call it shameful. By 1925, the standard has completely flipped. That same modest coverage from five years earlier is now the scandal, banned "by order of decency," and the woman wearing it gets called a hussy.
Then the strip jumps to a speculative 1930, marked with a question mark since it hadn't happened yet. The woman here wears a genuinely skimpier two-piece. But the objection has escalated past coverage entirely, a new sign bans bathing suits outright, put up by a fictional "Society for the Prevention of Bathing Suits." She asks the only reasonable question left: now what am I going to do?
The joke isn't really about swimwear. It's about moral outrage always finding a new target, no matter how much ground it's already given up.
The Fresno Bee, July 31 1926
Here's the twist. The exact same day, a real photograph ran of an actual bathing suits. One was even “knitted.” Described as the latest rage in southern California, worn by Miss Margaret Hampton.
These are just plain fun to look at, and by today’s standards look like young women heading to their college Union, not the beach.
Cutting Room Floor
The Edwardsville Intelligencer, July 31 1926
Speaking of Ethel Hays and Flapper Fanny Says, her same day cartoon in a different paper offers a simple piece of wisdom: the proper costume for eating watermelon is a bathing suit. No further argument needed.
A perfectly good practical joke to close out a day that was otherwise busy litigating exactly how much of that bathing suit is allowed to show.
What sticks with me today is how self-aware 1926 already was about its own moral panics, someone was mocking the goalpost-moving in real time, while the goalposts kept moving anyway.
If you haven’t seen our video outlining just some of how hard it was being a woman in 1926, here’s that:
See you tomorrow. – Chris
Sources
Public Opinion, July 31, 1926
The Fresno Bee, July 31, 1926
The Edwardsville Intelligencer, July 31, 1926