Conceal, Enhance, Expose, Perfect: A Mid-Century Mormon Swimsuit Designer’s Feminine Bodily Discipline

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes feminine bodily discipline through the intersection of fashion and faith in mid-century America. Through an analysis of the life and career of Rose Marie Reid—a world-renowned swimsuit designer—this article complicates the cultural history of bodily discipline by recovering the nuances of Reid’s roles as the head of a global swimsuit business and a conservative Mormon mother. I argue that Reid’s major intervention was an insistence that a desirable female subjectivity requires discipline, diligence, and material assistance—an articulation of Reid’s deep-seated beliefs about the eternal significance of gender, the body, and marriage. Reid’s swimwear suggests that what is exposed must first be enhanced while the mechanisms of enhancement remain concealed. Taking traditional Mormon views on gender to a conservative extreme, Reid’s regime of feminine bodily discipline ultimately aimed to perfect a woman’s body in order to attract a husband to which she could eternally submit.