This paper addresses tourist and militarist notions of the Pacific by discussing the
bikini bathing suit and its connection to nuclear testing. The paper begins with an
account of nuclear testing on Pacific islarids, focusing longest on Bikini Atoll, and
ends with a description of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.
The body of the paper is a discussion of the politics of the bikini bathing suit in
terms of what it simultaneously reveals and conceals. The bikini reveals the
female body in order to depoliticize it and symbolically conceals the bodies of
Pacific Islanders in order to depoliticize them. Feminist, psychoanalytic, and
Marxist theories are used to argue that the bikini both commodifies a nasty colonial
reality and appropriates the female body to divert attention from the indigenous
decolonizing efforts. However, while the bikini was created to celebrate
nuclear power, s/pacific bodies have survived in spite of nuclear destruction and
continue to resist tourist and militarist notions of who they should be
