Southern Belles
Southern Belles and Bathing Beauties dress up a giant map of Florida made from grapefruits and oranges for tourists on the electric boat tour at Cypress Gardens.
Opened near Winter Haven, Florida, in 1936, Cypress Gardens became central Florida’s number one attraction in a Dixie before Disney. Young women in big dresses posed, sauntered and frolicked at Cypress Gardens creating tableaus for tourists as if they were in a foreign land catching a voyeuristic glimpse of nymph-like Southern women in their natural habitat. Cypress Gardens was reinvented as Legoland in 2011.