Sunday, October 24, 2010

Yoga and meditation at the beach

Yoga at the beach

Photo above: Pavlina wearing G-strings tries to calm her nerves and soul sitting next to the waves, practicing Yoga at the beach.

Pinagbuyutan Private Beach

Pinagbuyutan Private Beach: a young woman, wearing a blue thong, sitting on a beach and practicing Yoga

Anyone can find any number of articles on the history of bikini that invariably leads to all kinds of underwear, lingerie, swimsuits, bathing suits, etc. But these articles and historical write-ups are rather speculative, as they are written later than the periods of their origin and hence speculative and contradictory. Hence, the origin of the term G-string is also obscure.

According to some accounts, since the beginning of the 19th century, the term ‘geestring’ referred to the string which held the loincloth of Native Americans (American Indians), and later it referred to the narrow loincloth itself. But interestingly, or by coincidence, it structurally is the same as the G-strings (Konaan or Konakam) traditionally worn by the Indian men of the Indian subcontinent, especially Southern parts of India.

William Safire in his ‘Ode on a G-String’ quotes the usage of the word ‘G-string’ for loincloth by Harper's Magazine 15 years after Beadle's and suggested that the magazine confused the word with the musical term G-string (the string for the G note). Safire also mentions the opinion of linguist Robert Hendrickson that G (or gee) stands for groin, which was a taboo word at these times.

It may be a reference to the period when Britain was gripped in the strangleholds of Victorian Prudery, when even showing lowest parts of the legs of women were considered obscene, indecent and antisocial. The times were worse than the restrictions existing now in some Middle East countries. And there are stories that showing or talking about legs of anything, including legs of tables were against Victorian prudery and people used to make covers for table legs so that they are not naked (read A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson).

But Edgar Rice Burroughs dressed his fictional character, Tarzan, in a G-string for the first time in his book ‘The Son of Tarzan’ (1914, chapter 26). However, Korak, son of Tarzan, used a G-string before his father Tarzan did in the same book (chapter 20).

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