Let's look more closely at this process. The bubbles that form at the boiling point contain water vapor. In order for a bubble to exist the pressure of the vapor in the bubble must be pushing against the water with exactly the same force that the water is pushing back. Assuming that we have a normal beaker and just a few cm of water, almost all of the pressure being exerted by the water is air pressure. Hence for the bubble to exist the vapor pressure must be equal to atmospheric pressure. We define a "normal" boiling point as the boiling point of the liquid at 1 atm, or another way of saying this is that the "normal" boiling point is the temperature at which the liquid's vapor pressure is equal to 1 atm.