At the beach: fashionable bathing wear, early 1900s

Amy Paulson and friend in bathing suits, early 1900s

"Bathing suit" seems to be the most correct term for this type of fashion. I suspect that "swimming" in such attire would have been difficult. Please note that our bathers are fashionably "daring" as they have left off the long stockings that were often part of this type of attire and scandalously bared their legs to the photographer (probably one of Amy's brothers or sisters.)

This picture was likely taken along the coast of Texas sometime between 1900 and 1912. But there is a chance that it was taken in the river near Davenport, Iowa instead. Amy Paulson is the lady on the left. Her friend occurs in multiple pictures from both Texas and Iowa. So far I have been unable to identify her.

A nice article,  "The 1900s Bathing Suit" by Melissa Haug (Victoiana Magazine), on early bathing and bathing suits can be found at: http://www.victoriana.com/swimsuit/bathingsuits.htm

Identifiers:
Negative #: Paulson347 (1200 bpi tiff downsized to 400 bpi jpeg for this post)
Related Post: More early swim suits
Amy Paulson (10 Dec 1881 to 18 Oct 1918, immigrated from Sweden as a baby in 1882)
Date of picture: (1900-1912)