EXIT NECK TO KNEE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 58, 10 March 1933, Page 6

EXIT NECK TO KNEE

EULE EOE COSTUMES

LASTING WORDING

THE NEW BYLAW

While city and borough councils elsewhere have worried much or little over the wording*'of bathing costume bylaws, and have drawn up long sentences about neck to knee and minimum measurements and two-piece costumes and furbelows, the Wellington City Council is happy in that its new bylaw is quite simple and is good for all time. The new bylaw merely says that bathers shall be so attired that no part of the body shall be indecently or offensively exposed. No matter how bathing fashions change, that wordinowill last unaltered, though, without much doubt, there will be outbursts from time to time as to how it should be interpreted. A good many people think that the new costumes are just a trifle overdone • —or underdone—but even those who most object to such expanses of back would not advocate a return to the hideous (but very modest) costumes of the days when few really nice ladies bathed at all, costumes of uniformly dingy dark blue, down to the ankles down towards the elbows, and so em--bellished with skirts that they were useless for swimming, though excellent for the fierce sport of "bobbing"; ladies did not swim in those days, they simply could not in those costumes. Nor would many wish to return to the view that sunbathing was ecandalous, and mixed sunbathing so impossible that the police must be sent for immediately. THE MAIN THTKra—THE SXTS. Just when, sunbathing became generally tolerated, but not quite nice in Wellington is not recalled, but evidently it was after 1908, when the last consolidation of bylaws was made,' and before 1914, when a new bylaw was passed to meet the case. The old 1908 bylaw said this: "No person over the age of ten years shall bathe on any beach within the View of any person or persons passing along any of the streets, thoroughfares, roads, or public places of the city or within'the view of persons in any dwelling-house in the city unless such persons so bathing shall be properly clad in a bathing garment reaching from the shoulder to the knee." The 1914 bylaw recognised that sunbathinghad come to stay: "No 'male person in swimming costume who is over the age of ten years shall be or remain on any beach foreshore open to the public except for the purpose of entering the water or when leaving the water to reach any bathing shed or other place for the purpose of dressing unless such person shall be clad in the swimming costume known as the Canadian costume or in a woollen neck to knee costume, provided V shape trunks are worn underneath." As the Canadian costume never reached anything like the knee or the neckit became the rage, and with sunbathing given some official recognition it became considerably more.important than the water, the sale of . coconut oil boomed (nowadays* ] thanks to the great strides .made in chemistry and salesmanship you can buy sunburn, painlessly, in a bottle), and the old bylaw- did quite well until Canadian costumes went completely out of fashion, and some councils decided that they must have a bylaw calling for the application of the foot-mle, marked in inches. Even with so many out of work it is doubtful whether any inspector would consent to Temain on that particular duty after a, first day's attempt. The new Wellington rule simply says that no bather (five minutes in the water and two hours in the sun) shall indecently or offensively expose any part of the body. OTHER POINTS. The other revised beach and bathing bylaws are not very different from the old set, but there are one; or two points not generally known. It is," of course, against the'bylaws to undress except in some adequate shelter, a point which Oriental Bay bathers overlook, Tather too openly to be much longer tolerated. '< It is an offence to swim more th,an 100 yards out to sea at Lyall Bay, a rule not embodied in the bylaws merely to give beach officials another duty, but to safeguard bathers against their own foolishness. It is an offence to bathe where a "danger" notice is posted. ' . * Surfboards are.not to exceed five feet in length and eighteen inches in -width and one and a, half inches in thickness, and a surf board of those dimensions can- leave a fairish bruise. The council reserves the right to mark off limits in which surfboards may be used. Definite limits are given the "prohibited area" at Island Bay, in which limits fishing, fish cleaning, boat landing or netting is forbidden; -the wording of 'the clause is .quite considerable, but for most people the red and white signposts are a sufficient indication.