

However, these types of coverings could be described as derivations of male underwear or garments associated with sports, such as jockstraps, which tend to reveal the muscle power of the legs and buttocks.

The G-string was comprised of an elastic string that went around the waist and up between the buttocks and is popularly believed to have been originally added to the stripper's accoutrements on the occasion of the 1939 World's Fair in New York when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia demanded that the city's nude dancers cover themselves as a mark of respect for the thousands of visitors thronging the city. The stripper's G-string is another influence and has been an important part of the striptease artist's-or, more latterly, lap dancer's-wardrobe since the 1950s, when the taboo of displaying the vagina or any degree of pubic hair was paramount. This tiny bikini-dubbed the fio denta, or dental floss-ensured that the buttocks achieved maximum exposure to the sun and openly displayed an erogenous zone that was a particular favorite in Latino culture. Its sources are manifold the thong bikini designed by Rudi Gernreich in 1974, launched with a matching Vidal Sassoon hairstyle, is one which in turn spawned the more popular Brazilian string bikini brief, or tanga, of the late 1970s. The G-string, or thong, a panty front with a half- to one-inch strip of fabric at the back that sits between the buttocks, became one of the most popular forms of female underwear in the early twenty-first century.
