A police officer issuing a woman a ticket for wearing a bikini on a beach at Rimini, Italy, in 1957.

27 comments
  1. He should have arrested the woman in the background for showing her ankles AND her knees as well. Both are obvious meretrices…

  2. Total menace to society, I can’t believe we allow people to walk around like that. Honestly I agree with people who say this shouldn’t be allowed. Long sleeves, long pants, and gloves? At the beach??? Gosh.

  3. A little insight on this pic.

    It was recently featured on a New York Times article by Alyssa J. Rubin entitled “From Bikinis to Burkinis, Regulating What Women Wear”, so this maybe is the reason why it has acquired some traction on the internet (and why it landed here, eventually)

    It belongs to Ullstein Bild, a German archive. Thus, very likely the girl pictured is a German tourist. The “policeman” is actually a “Vigile Urbano”, an officer of the so called “Polizia Municipale”, or city police. This is basically the police force mostly used for low-security/local/traffic issues. He’s wearing the tipical summer suit, which was “strategically” white, to better withstand the heat. It must be stated that in 1957 Italy was still a relatively poor and less developed country facing its reconstruction after the WW2, so AC was not even in the picture yet. And summers in the Emilia Romagna region tend to be particularly hot.

    Thing is, when asked about that particular period, veteran folks tend to exclude that bikini wearing was actually an issue. A then-lifeguard actually stated his perplexity about this picture, as he recalls bikinis were widely spread among girls (and tolerated, as Rimini was a very open and progressive city, for the strict catholic Italy standards of the time). Thus, it’s highly probable that the lady was actually being fined for a different matter, and not for wearing a bikini.

    EDIT: thanks so much for the award!

  4. I’m equally impressed by her physique and by how gorgeous that bikini is, I haven’t seen any bikinis this beautiful like, ever…

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