Googly Eye Bikini

This Googly Eye Bikini is thee swimwear solution of 2015. Fun in the sun shouldn't be coupled with diminishing objectification - instead, take hold of your ability to participate in a body politics dialog by commenting on the absurdity of reverse objectification.

Feeling oppressed on the beach by the sun, heat, and penetrative male gaze? Looking for a way to get that tan and dismantle rape culture? Then combat hegemonic power structures on your next trip to the beach with this bikini! Reverse-objectify your oppressors with sand dollar-sized googly-eyes provocatively perched, yielding a relentless, piercing gaze upon anyone who looks at your body. With this bikini you will smash the patriarchy, implicitly comment on the phallocentrism of sand castles, and be on the foaming edge of 5th wave feminist discourse.

I got this bikini top from an American Apparel outlet sale for five bucks. My model come in to our shop so I could measure her. I made small marks on the strings of the bikini so I could place the rough location of where the eyes would go.

The googly eyes were a gift from a friend, who knows I love googly eyes. I haven't been able to find the same 4" model, but there are 3" googly eyes, and 5" googly eyes that could work for your bikini.

I cut the paper-backs of the googly eyes off, so that this could be a submergable-watertight bikini. I did this with an exacto knife, only because it was hard to use oppressive traditional craft scissors.

I found some thick malleable plastic sheet stocked in the shop, I think it was scrap for the vacu-former, and made new plastic backings for the 4" googly eyes.

I love ShoeGoo - it is made for shoes, but bonds to all kinds of surfaces to make a water-tight seal on everything it adheres to. I put a thin line of glue on the outside of the dome of the lens of the googly eye, before sticking it back down to it's new plastic backing.

I could try, and be really careful, and use the right cutting utensils to trim away the excess plastic from the edges, but where's the fun in that? I opted to wear a full-face shield and the belt-sander to clean up the edges.

Using fabritac, I stuck down the googly eyes to the center of each cup of the bikini.

After the glue was dry, I found a mannequin and test fit the bikini. Hazah! It googlys** just fine!

**The word 'Googlys' is an acceptable past participle of the word 'Googly', right?

With this instructable, I really just wanted to share a creative use for googly eyes - and maybe a little insight on how to you make your own googly eyes. Big thanks to Caitlin Randolph for modeling, Lauren Randolph for photographing the project, Michelle Alexis Neman for letting us use her pool, and Diana Bradbury for being my fit model and giving me the idea.