Young Reddish Blonde Girl Undresses A White Bra And Thongs In The Shower

A descendant of the loincloth and thong is the jockstrap, created by Chicago sporting goods company Sharp & Smith in 1874. The first historical reference to the thong since then is in 1939 New York City when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ordered nude dancers to dress more appropriately. Jacques Heim's and Louis Réard's original bikini from 1946 (that introduced the term bikini) had a culotte with a thong back. Fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, who had in the mid-1960s created the first topless swimsuit, which he called the monokini, is credited with introducing the modern thong in 1974.
Thongs first became popular as a swimsuit style in South America, particularly in Brazil. In the 1990s, the thong began to gain wider acceptance and popularity in the United States as underwear (and, to a lesser extent, as swimwear), especially with women, but also men. In the USA and Europe, the wearing of thongs by men was once mainly limited to the dance belt, the posing pouch for bodybuilders and the realm of male strippers. Men's thongs are now more widely available and commonly worn as day-to-day underwear or swimwear. They are still not marketed as strongly to men as they are to women. In Europe thongs have been commonplace for many more years both as underwear and swimwear.