This is another entry in the Life Magazine, 1964 series. If you want to read the series from the beginning, use the link above.

Life played the idea of the topless swimsuit to the max. The idea was to scare the hell out of ordinary women around the country by making it clear that they were going to be expected to go topless within the near future. Everyone would be doing it and only the most hopeless old dowd would be covering up.

Of course, this was nonsense. Only a few hundred of the suits were ever sold and only a few women tried to wear them in public (and they were arrested). It's amazing that, just forty years ago, a national magazine would stoop to such hackery. From the first article, titled, Me? In That!:

Much of the world, at least that civilized part dedicated to concealment of the female bosom, was in a state of uneasiness and shock. The topless bathing suit had appeared and was actually being bought by hundreds of women - and even worn in public by a brazen few. It set off and international buzz about morality, legality and esthetics. While many men who had never seen a "topless" brightened at just the idea, women who viewed the suits in stores were appalled.

To reinforce this point, we are treated to a view of an appalled woman, in a picture that is obviously posed - she's looking at the camera, through the missing part of the suit:

But there was really a lot less to it than that. The whole thing was a publicity stunt by a clothing designer named Rudi Gernreich. Gernreich was a designer from California who now is "best known as the creator of the topless bathing suit", which tells you that this was a career-building event. He was a shameless self-promoter who even put in a TV appearance on the Batman TV show in 1966. This photo wasn't even from a swimming pool in the US, it was of a copycat suit made by a designer in France and worn in a French pool.

Of course, this isn't an example of Life running pictures of uncovered breasts. They are covered, of course, by all of that water. A model named Peggy Moffitt did the modeling photos for the fashion shots in Life, which were taken by her husband, photographer William Claxton at her insistence. She worked closely with Rudi; the article describes her as his "muse". She smoked Cigarettellos and wore dark red eyeshadow (which looks black in the photos). She and Rudy charmingly described themselves as "Now People" as in - look at us right Now, People! Moffitt went on to make a career out the idea that she was a swinging 60's chick. She managed to get a couple of movie roles, but for the most part seems to have reached reached her pinnacle with this Life Magazine spread. She was interviewed in 2001 and they were still talking about her work with Rudi, husband William Claxton and the topless suit itself.

The real problem here is the fact that the suit itself was hideous. It covered the lower torso like a bucket with leg holes and was about as sexy as a potato sack. You can easily tell that the whole thing was a publicity stunt from the fact that a woman who was willing to be seen on a runway in ridiculous costumes like these was still not willing to be seen in public in the suit or even photographed in it by a stranger (she agreed to wear it only if photographed in private, by her husband - at least that was her story). Moffitt said, "Either you do a thing or you don't. Besides, if I don't do it, Suzy Parker might do it first." The article asks:

Why buy it? There seem to be two reasons. One is the fashion feedback effect - fashion-conscious women buy it because Rudi Gernreich designed it. The other reason is strictly feminine. If a woman is going to appear naked, she somehow prefers to appear naked in something designed for the purpose, not half of last year's bikini.

Of course no one was going to be appearing naked. One "model" named Toni Lee Shelley tried for a bit of publicity of her own by wearing the suit on North Avenue Beach in Chicago, but she was promptly arrested for indecent exposure. The publicity may have worked however, as an actress named Toni Lee Shelley shows up in a low-budget beach movie called The Fat Spy in 1965. Sadly, IMDB lists this as her only movie. Other than a few girlie magazine appearances, she seems to have vanished.

It was no doubt easy to get pictures of Edith Bunker-type women looking at the suit in disgust in shop windows. Oddly, the article about the suit, by Shana Alexander, was openly mocking (of course, you only read this after you buy the magazine and check out the photos):

The suit is no good for swimming, because it falls off, and it is no good for sunning, because it leaves disastrous strap marks. It is no good for getting your picture in the papers any more, because too many people have already tried that, and anyhow the cameraman is likely to turn timid and photograph you from the back. As for the front view of the suit, it proves on that, whatever else she may be, a bare-breasted woman in broad daylight is chiefly unnerving.
...
Altogether, toplessness is fashion's best joke on itself in years.

I doubt she ever saw the suit before writing this, since anyone can see that this suit would never fall off. It would take real work to peel it off and it's not likely that Peggy Moffitt had ever gotten wet in it anyway. The article also featured a series of Gernreich's designs from a 1954 suit that daringly eschewed the "inner bra" of the times, to a bikini and a single-piece suit with a neckline that plunged to the waist. Last in the series is the above shot of Peggy wearing the new suit, with hands delecately covering the offending breasts.

Other images are around on the web (here, for example) where she isn't covering herself, so it's hard to see why she would be sensitive about being seen topless. Probably, that was all to make the Life layout seem proper and above-board: "Hey, Mac, her husband took those pictures, you gotta problem with that?!"

Another article here claims that Life refused to run the pictures, saying, "This is a family magazine, and naked breasts are only allowed if the woman is an aborigine." But we know that is false, don't we? In the end, Life was simply a co-conspirator in scheme to sell magazines and promote the fashions of Rudi Gernreich. The whole incident is just another bizarre niche in American pop-culture.

We're not done with this issue of Life yet, however. There is still a fascinating article by Douglas MacArthur (another piece of shameless self promotion) and a few other tidbits. Say tuned for our next episode.

Note: this entry is part of a series called "Life Magazine, 1964", which contains the following entries:
     Life Magazine, 1964
     Life Magazine, 1964, Part II
     Life Magazine, 1964, Part III
     Life Magazine, 1964, Part IV
     Life Magazine, 1964, Part V