Skinny dipping... -- what's it all about?

Ever wondered what Katy Perry meant by ''skinny dipping'' in her ''Last Friday Night"? Irrespective of whatever you pictured, there's quite a story behind this phrase.

Eugene de Blaas, "In the Water" (1914)

Skinny dipping, is a term used to describe nude swimming. The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked body.  

Prior to the mid-19th century, swimming nude was unexceptional. Francis Kilvert, a skinny-dipper (1873), describes men's bathing suits then coming into use as "a pair of very short red and white striped drawers". Period illustrations of women's suits show they were far more cumbersome.

Benjamin Franklin, an avid swimmer, possessed a copy of the Art of Swimming by Melchisédech Thévenot, which featured illustrations of nude swimmers. Among other notable Americans, Presidents John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt are perhaps the best-known skinny-dippers. Roosevelt describes nude swims in the Potomac with his "tennis cabinet" in his Autobiography: "If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes." Quotations from the diary of Rev. Francis Kilvert, an English nude swimmer, in Cec Cinder's The Nudist Idea, show the transition in the England of the 1870s from an acceptance of nude bathing to the mandatory use of bathing suits. 

In some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s. This was also the case for some US high and junior high schools. A 2006 Roper poll showed that 25% of all American adults had been skinny dipping at least once, and that 74% believed nude swimming should be tolerated at accepted locations.

In the United States, various counties and municipalities may enact their own dress codes, and many have. There is no federal law against nudity. Nude beaches, such as Baker Beach in San Francisco, operate within federal park lands in California. However, under a provision called concurrent jurisdiction, federal park rangers may enforce state and local laws, or invite local authorities to do so.

based on: en.wikipedia.org

Dog and pony show

Dog and pony show is a colloquial term previously used in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th centuries to refer to small travelling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas. The name derives from the common use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.

Performances were generally held in open-air arenas, such as race tracks or public spaces in localities that were too small or remote to attract larger, more elaborate performers or performances. By the latter part of the 20th century, the original meaning of the term had largely been lost.

The term has come to mean a highly promoted, often over-staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince opinion for political, or less often, commercial ends. Typically, the term is used to connote disdain, jocular lack of appreciation, or distrust of the message being presented or the efforts undertaken to present it.

 

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_and_pony_show