Women’s bathing suits can be categorized into one-piece and two-piece suits. There are numerous styles, designs and variants for each type. For example, the bikini, a typical two-piece bathing suit for women, can be further classified into the thong, G-string or tankini. One-piece bathing suits, on the other hand, have variants such as the monokini, stringbody, sling bikini, and halter-neck.

Of the two-piece bathing suits, the bikini is the most popular for women, and is worn in most countries in the West. When the bikini came out in 1946, it was considered too revealing and shunned by many cultures including the United States. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the bikini bathing suit suddenly grew in popularity when movies like And God Created Woman and Bikini Beach were released.

The tankini is also a two-piece bathing suit for women, similar to a regular bikini bathing suit, but the top, often referred to as a tank top, extends downward to somewhere between just above the navel and the top of the hips, and is therefore less revealing than a regular bikini top.

The G-string is one of the fastest-selling swimsuit styles among women today. It has its origins in 1970s Brazil and now has many other variants such as the thong, T-back and V-string.

One-piece bathing suits include the monokini, designed by an Austrian named Rudi Gernreich in 1967. It is a one-piece, topless bathing suit for women consisting of only the lower piece of the bikini. Monokini is a variant of the original two-piece bikini bathing suit, and may also be used to refer to other one piece swimsuits such as a sling bikini.

The sling bikini is another very popular swimsuit choice among women. It has side straps that extend upwards to cover the breasts. The straps then go over the shoulders and reach down the back to form a thong. The entire sides of the torso are revealed this way. So the advantage of a sling bikini lies in its convenience, by combining two elements (the top and the bottom pieces) into one.

Other forms of one-piece bathing suits for women include stringbodys, halter-necks, maillots, tanksuits, plunge fronts and pretzel suits.