We've come to accept that time may or may not be on the side of the Rolling Stones, that The Who's generation may not all die before they get old, and that the remaining Beatles may well find themselves struggling with love at 64. But can we make our peace with the notion that the bikini—that symbol of summer—is itself entering its seventh decade? (来源：英语学习门户 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

Coincidentally, two unrelated Frenchmen (an engineer named Louis Reard and designer Jacques Heim) separately came up with their own versions of the steamy two-piece swimsuit in July of 1946, as nuclear testing continued on the Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands.

So why name the swimwear for the island? No one knows for sure, although punsters have had plenty of fun speculating. Was it because the effects of a scantily clad woman were explosive? Was it because the new style was the bomb? Fashionista Diana Vreeland referred to the bikini as the atom bomb of fashion; and one early name for the bikini (which debuted on the French Riviera) was l'atome.

Perhaps it's fitting that the appearance of the word bikini has inspired a number of spin offs. On the theory that the bi- in bikini refers to the suit's two parts, the topless bikini was dubbed a monokini, and the tank top two-piecer a tankini.

Bare your soul, if not your belly, and drop us a line.