In communist China, women dressed in the androgynous uniform of a nation building a proletarian utopia. Skirts were avoided as a sign of bourgeois decadence; women wore their hair short by law.

Though restrictions loosened after Mao died in 1976, a decade later a crisis broke out over a new threat to communist ideals: the bikini. An international body-building contest to be held in China required female contestants to wear a two-piece swimsuit. One Chinese commentator decried the bikini as “not acceptable to Oriental sensibility”. Another called for police action against the “unhealthy tendency” of wearing swimwear in public.