Not Too Near the Water

In Stanza 1, the girl is "afraid to come out of the locker," and by Stanza 2, she has a blanket around her and is "bundled up on the shore." Somehow, she manages to immerse herself before the outset of Stanza 3, which finds her "afraid to come out of the water," for none of the reasons that come most readily to mind. It's simply that she is embarrassed by her

Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot bikini

That she wore for the first time today--An itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot bikini,

So in the water she wanted to stay.

Cut four weeks ago, the record is more or less sung by Brian Hyland, 16, a hitherto unpublicized and untrained singer from Queens, who was "discovered" last year by a talent agent who heard him singing in the lobby of Manhattan's Brill Building, headquarters of Tin Pan Alley. Itsy Bitsy has already sold 600,000 copies, is all over the jukeboxes, TV and radio, in fact all over everything except the poor little unnamed girl in the song.

As usual, life imitated art; bathing suits last week agitated the U.S. scene far beyond the realm of the jukebox:

P: The fate of the bikini in the U.S. hung by one string. Despite a major sales campaign, Manhattan stores reported that customers were buying bikinis only for wear in semi-seclusion--penthouse terraces, backyards--but that men were trying to persuade their wives or girl friends to try bikinis in a wider variety of landscapes. Nonetheless, models and Europeans continued to be the stores' best sort of bikini customers. The forbidding breath of Salem could still be felt on most American beaches.

P: Wearing suits more substantial--and more deceiving--than teeny-weeny bikinis, 87 entrants turned up in Miami last week for the ninth Miss Universe contest. In some cases the bathing suits were too substantial, for, driven by hopes of TV and film contracts, some girls would not stop at nothing--since they had nothing to begin with. At least half were caught with extra added attractions, and what had looked like 36-23-36 was really an unfalsied 23-23-23. From Rangoon's Myint Myint May (Miss Burma) to Utah's Linda Bement (Miss U.S.A.), the girls posed endlessly in the Miami sun, gorged U.S. newspapers with grilled cheese. At week's end, Miss U.S.A. was the winner.

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