An aerial performer was handcuffed and arrested for wearing a thong bikini to the beach.

Sam Panda, a professional acrobat, was enjoying the sun at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina over the weekend when officers showed up and detained her for her bathing suit after another woman apparently called to complain.

‘A woman called the cops on me because of my bikini,’ Sam wrote on Facebook alongside a video of the incident.

‘That’s how it all started. Some Karen decided that my body was offensive to her and showed her child that her body could one day lead to arrest.’

The clip begins with Sam being put into handcuffs by two police officers – neither of whom are wearing face masks.

Sam objects to her arrest and asks to be shown the law that explicitly states that she cannot wear her bikini to the beach. One of the officers then says he will show them in the car.

‘Why is it illegal to wear a bikini on the beach?’ a man holding the camera asks while Sam adds,’ I literally wear this every day.’

Once they arrive at the police cruiser, an officer reads an ordinance that reads: ‘it shall be unlawful for anyone to appear in the nude’ on public beaches.

‘I’m not nude!’ Sam said, but the officer replies that she is wearing a thong.

‘You put me in handcuffs for being in a thong!’ Sam protests.

Although the law read by officers does not appear to apply to Sam’s bikini, Myrtle Beach ordinances have outlawed thongs on public beaches.

According to the city’s municipal code, ‘Public exposure of specified anatomical parts is unlawful’

Those ‘anatomical parts’ include buttocks – which rules out the wearing of thongs.

However, the law does not call for police to handcuff anyone breaking it. Instead, it says she should have been given a ticket.

After a prolonged argument with police, the officers change their tune and say Sam was detained for ‘how (she was) acting,’ not for her bikini.

Eventually, Sam is taken out of the handcuffs and she was released without charges, but she later took to Facebook to hit out at whoever called police.

‘If you are a woman, and you decide to call police on other women for their bodies ON A BEACH, IN FRONT OF YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER…’

‘You have allowed a 105 pound woman to get rushed, aggressively grabbed, manhandled, and cuffed. You allowed two women to be slut-shamed publicly on a beach for their bathing suits.’

‘And worst of all, you showed your daughter that her body is something she should be ashamed of and could be detained for. You showed her that a man can harm a woman over the way her body is viewed by other people.’

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