The bikini as the first turning point: a scandal on the beach, but no change in everyday life

When the bikini was first shown in France in 1946, the appearance of the female belly in public was a shock. The idea of not only showing skin between the chest and hips, but deliberately presenting it, contradicted the clothing norms of the post-war period.

And yet the revolution did not happen in the cities, but on the beach.

In the 1950s, the bikini entered the mainstream, worn by icons such as Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe. But the visibility of the belly remained limited to certain places. It took place where summer, water, and laissez-faire were considered exceptional circumstances. Everyday life remained clothed, controlled, and closed.

The belly was visible, but still far from being publicly erotic.

No one saw a belly in the 1950s and thought of lust. They thought of vacations, sun, movie stars—not sexuality. The belly button was simply an everyday feature on an otherwise unspectacular area of skin, without cultural significance.

The 1960s and 1970s: Liberation without belly, nudity without suggestion

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s brought about a different conception of physicality. It was not interested in the belly – but in the principle of general exposure.

Wrap skirts, bare breasts, communal nudity in communes, the idea of natural sexuality: the belly disappeared from view. You showed everything – or you showed nothing at all.

Partial exposure was not a goal, but a compromise that was consciously rejected. Erotic energy lay in breaking taboos and in the body as a whole. In this context, the navel was not rediscovered, but overlooked.

It was too harmless, too casual, too unsymbolic to attract attention.

Eroticism was thought of in terms of total body freedom, not in terms of zones of suggestion. In this respect, the utopia of the 1960s stood in stark contrast to the fashionable game that was to emerge in the 1990s: eroticism through curation, not through radicalism.

The 1980s: Body, performance, control – the navel as a by-product

The 1980s brought back the belly, but not as an erotic surface. It became the scene of athletic ambition: aerobics, fitness, neon colors, Lycra.

Visible muscles, visible discipline – that was the code.

The navel appeared in this aesthetic, but not as an invitation, rather as a byproduct of a logic of performance.

One can imagine a scene in which someone is doing aerobics in front of the TV, their bodysuit pulled up, their abdominal wall hard, their navel visible – not as a promise, but as proof.

Sex played a subordinate role in this iconic visual language.

The belly was shown, but not desired. It was evaluated, not longed for.

Pop culture icons: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Aaliyah

Hypersexualization was not decided theoretically, but implemented iconically.

Music videos of the 1990s – especially those by Britney Spears – established an image in which the exposed belly was staged as the main message of the female pop body.

These images communicated:

• Youth
• Sexual energy
• Self-confident but domesticated rebellion

Britney in her schoolgirl look with a knotted top was not just pop aesthetics, but the promise that sexuality could be sold without being pornographic.

Christina Aguilera and Aaliyah took this further – the belly became part of an aestheticized, well-trained, standardized body that appeared both “free” and “controlled.”

This was not a random fashion trend.

It was market dynamics: sexualization that could be sold on supermarket shelves.

The fit body as the norm – and the belly button as the measuring point

Hypersexualization of the belly button didn’t just mean visibility.

It meant visibility under certain conditions.

The belly had to be:

• flat
• defined, but not muscular
• hairless
• scarless

Perfection became a prerequisite for visibility.

The belly button thus functioned as an indicator of normativity:

if you could show it, you were “in shape.”

If not, it remained covered.

Thus, sexualization shifted toward self-optimization – and the street scene was transformed.

The street scene: from the exception to the uniform

What began on MTV ended up on the streets.

Not only clubs, but shopping malls, schools, cities.

18-year-old women wore:

• Ramp Tops
• Crop shirts
• Low-rise jeans

And with them, they made a promise:

“I fulfill the new rules of desire.”

The belly button became a public standard, not a private fetish.

It was a fashion requirement, not an individual choice.

And that created social pressure that was hardly reflected at the time.

The dialectic: empowerment or commodification?

It would be too simplistic to interpret this moment as pure exploitation.

For many women, the exposed belly meant:

• Freedom from prudery
• Physical self-determination
• Collective identity

It was a statement against the morality of the 1980s, which pathologized female skin.

But at the same time, desire shifted from a craving for sexuality to a craving for conformity.

The body not only had to be sexual—it had to be sexual in the right way.

That is the core of hypersexualization:

not that sexuality was present, but that it was codified.

Is hypersexualization over?

The short answer: yes and no.

The massive visibility of the belly button in the mainstream disappeared around 2008 with:

• High-rise jeans
• body positivity narratives
• Instagram “naturalness”
• athleisure fashion

The belly was covered, neutralized, made “more adult.”

But hypersexualization did not disappear.

It retreated into courses, communities, and niches where the belly once again became the code.

Literature: A body part without tradition

While fashion, pop culture, and the media sexualized the belly button, literature reacted with surprising hesitation.

Erotic texts from the 1950s to the 1970s dealt intensively with breasts, pubic areas, buttocks, and mouths—those parts of the body that were already culturally and historically charged.

The belly, on the other hand, had no literary symbolism.

It stood for nothing.

Neither eroticism, nor intimacy, nor power.

Even in the 1990s, it hardly found its way into narrative forms because its new meaning was primarily negotiated visually. The belly button was a visual phenomenon, not a linguistic one.

The eroticism of fashion worked through the gaze, the pose, the gesture – not through narrative.

Modern eroticism: the belly as a moment, not as a center

In contemporary literature, the belly button appears less often as an erotic target and more as an intermediate phase, a transition.

Where a shirt slips, where skin is briefly visible, where someone moves without being ready.

A short excerpt:

She raises her arms to tie her hair, and the fabric of her shirt slides up. Her belly is exposed, soft, her navel sucked in. She only notices it when his gaze wanders there, not demanding, but curious. And suddenly she doesn’t know whether to pull the fabric down or finish the gesture.

The navel is not desired here as an object, but as a sign of movement, as a place where intimacy flashes briefly before it is decided.

What does this mean for us as authors of erotic literature?

Today, the belly offers us a space that previous generations did not have:

eroticism through suggestion rather than execution.

It is an area of tension, not of goal.

A place where posture, uncertainty, and openness become visible before anything happens.

It can be used to tell a story:

• how close two characters are to each other
• how secure someone feels
• how much a body is at peace with itself—or protects itself

The belly button is not a trophy.

It is a threshold.

It is literarily interesting when it becomes briefly visible before it is covered – or remains uncovered.

Because in that moment, a body negotiates something that fashion could never express: not sex, but vulnerability.

A body part that came late – and stays long

The path of the belly button from the beaches of the 1950s to the pop fashion of the 1990s was not a linear development, but a consequence of contradictory body politics.

But it was only when suggestion became more important than revelation that it found its stage.

And it was only when literature began to explore subtle sensory tensions that it found its voice.

Perhaps that is why the belly button is not a loud erotic motif.

Perhaps it is a quiet one that has the strongest effect when no one has planned it:

a piece of skin that shows itself before anyone knows whether they want it to be seen.

And that is precisely what makes it interesting to us – not as a symbol of desire, but as a place of transition between body and narrative.