Wednesday 21 January 2009

Quick hit: Bikini tops - togs or undies?

The Weekend Herald does it again. Must be a slow news month or something.
New Zealanders appear to be more liberal than the Caribbeans when it comes to showing off a bit of skin.

Following a ban on Speedos and bikinis away from the beach on the island of Grenada in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, the Weekend Herald tried an experiment in Mt Maunganui.

We couldn't find any men donning budgie smugglers to take part but we did get bikini-clad 16-year-olds Laura Schmitt and Clare McMahon to walk down the the main drag, Maunganui Rd - about 300m from the beach on one side and 200m from the harbour side - at lunchtime to gauge public reaction.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there wasn't actually a story here until the reporter (or more likely the editor) created one, was there? Sigh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"16-year-olds"?! Why?

I mean...

Like...

Um...

Why?

Feeling the need to add some content, one of the things that's odd about using 16 year olds is that child nudity/undress is completely different from the same unclothedness in adults. 16 year olds are not indicative of standards for either children or adults.

But it's not the only thing that's odd.

Julie said...

I was struck by that too Anita, and wondered the same things. Sadly (?) we may never know.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's just where I hang out, but some 16 year olds seem very keen to display their secondary sexual characteristics. Perhaps the paper chose them because they're old enough to have those but not old enough to be sensible about what they're asked to do?

I mean, imagine asking random attractive 25yo women to parade down the main street in a bikini so you can see how people react...

Moz