At one point, while attempting to distract the magazine photographer, McHale and Parker tell him that the nurses are sunbathing "in their bikinis." Although two-piece bathing suits had been around for some time, the term "bikini" wasn't used to refer to them until 1946, in conjunction with the atomic test that happened at Bikini Atoll, when the French designer of a new two-piece design suggested that it would create a burst of excitement like the bomb.