This Week In Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: August 20, 1883

Dateline: Long Branch, NJ

1. Women must be pretty.

2. But they are born ugly, so we must make them pretty.

3. Women who go to the beach make this task very difficult for us.

4. And women who actually swim are nearly beyond help.

5. It is rather amusing, however, just how ugly swimming makes women!

6. Women who swim are so ugly, they don't even want men to look at their ugly bodies! But we do look at them, and then detail their hideousness in the pages of the New York Times.

7. Well, at least they are still wealthy.

8. Though these ugly, oceanic women allow no one to see how profoundly uncomfortable they are, I know they are profoundly uncomfortable, because I understand women. Even the ugly ones.

9. If a woman is not pretty, then she does not enjoy herself. As is proper.

10. But perhaps the water will help to cure her extreme ugliness anyhow.

11. And remember, even Butterfaces could be hiding a sensual ankle in the surf.

12. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of historical beach leering].

13. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of modern beach leering].

14. Foreign women! They are kind of hot, but so ignorant of the customs of our modern American beach leering!

15. This one hot foreign actress wore the ugliest swimsuit one time.

16. She was a shitty actress, too.

17. Yes, I am using the term "dudes." In 1883.

18. Girls can't swim!

19. Well, at least they display their pearly white arms when they're trying. Oh, did I mention that I am also a racist?

20. One reason for women to swim, of course, is to wear an outfit which mimics an animal's yoke, in order to infer that she would make a good, obedient wife.

21. Have I not sufficiently compared women to animals? Women women zebras.

22. Now I am leering at children.

23. Aaaaand back to the racism.

24. Old women are disgusting and must be kept indoors.

25. I like watching girls fall down.

26. Middle-aged women are the most heinous, for they insist upon swimming, though their bodies are universally reviled.

27. Have I mentioned swimming is for men?

This Week In Sexist History:

Good 'Ol Day: July 22, 1893

Dateline: Long Branch, N.J.

Subject: The summer of 1893 is nearly ruined for this sad sack New Jersey scene reporter—until the sexiest underage bather this side of puberty catches his roving eye!

What's lifting these male vacationers from the depths of their pathetic existences? If you've been studying your Sexist History, you'd know that the answer probably starts with Pretty and ends with Girls:

Oh, it makes no difference what shape you are in the freewheeling social scene of the Jersey surf! Unless, of course, you're "pretty girl" shaped, in which case your body will likely be obsessively detailed in the pages of the New York Times. Proceed:

Euugh! How old is the young lady in the red swimsuit, anyway? One the one hand, it's great that this girl is still in her spluttering-around-in-the-water bathing suit phase, and not yet in her crippled-by-body-issues bathing suit phase. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet the girl's sexy childhood innocence was shattered riiiiiight arrroooound July 23, 1893—the day this Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Reporter's ruminations on her sexy childhood innocence was printed in the pages of the New York Times.

How can Skeevy Turn-of-the-Century Reporter possibly redeem himself from the true skeeviness of ogling bathing children? By turning next to an even sleazier specimen: The Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Sketch Artist.

Done and done.