Thursday, May 14, 2009

BATHING SUIT BLUES




This came in the mail a few days ago, just after a well meaning new friend invited my support group to meet at her club house, around the "POOL." Timing was perfect for I had just been moaning about "the bathing suit" horrors. This sums up my feelings perfectly.

I tried to find out who had written it but couldn't track it down. I thought it was just too funny and so accurate that someone should get credit. If you know who wrote it, let me know. They are really good.

You have probably seen this before, I had, but it deserves another look. Especially as summer approaches. The last time I went bathing suit shopping it induced me to lose 20 pounds after the trauma wore off. Hum, maybe I'll drive down to Little Rock to do a little BS shopping this week end----.


The Bathing Suit


When I was a child in the 1950's the bathing suit for the mature figure was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift and they did a good job. Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.


The mature woman has a choice - she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus who escaped from Disney's Fantasia or she can wander around every run of the mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of florescent rubber bands.


What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room. The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which give the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks ---as any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.

I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place, I gasped in horror -- my boobs had disappeared! Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib. The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.


The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fit those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom, and sides. I looked like a lump of play dough wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, 'Oh, there you are,' she said, admiring the bathing suit. I replied that I wasn't so sure and asked what else she had to show me. I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two piece which gave the appearance of an oversized napkin in a serving ring.


I struggled into a pair of leopard skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day. I tried on a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning. I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

Finally, I found a suit that fit -- a two-piece affair with a shorts style bottom and a loose blouse-type top. It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search had a successful outcome, I figured. When I got home, I found a label which read - 'Material might become transparent in water.'

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I'm there too, I'll be the one in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt!

11 comments :

  1. You have something to pic up on my site.

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  2. Thank you so much Blue. It is beautiful and I can't wait to pass it on and put it in a place of honor on my side bar. You were my very first visitor and gave me the inspiration to continue. Thank you.

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  3. I'm so glad someone took the time to write this funny diatribe about today's bathing suits. I haven't had to buy a suit in years, and I dread the idea of having to try.

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  4. HA HA HA Patti... I loved it!!! I hadn't seen it before--but there's so much truth to it. I always dread putting on a bathing suit--even if it's one of my 'small' Summers.. (My weight changes from year to year ---either up or down!!!! ha)

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  5. robin,
    Didn't she hit home? I thought about water areboics a few years ago but trying on bathing suits scarred me for life. Cut offs and a tee shirt sounds good to me.

    Betsy,
    The last bathing suit I had on was in my bikini years. Since then, it has just been too degrading. Lucky you, I don't have small summers, just a wee bit bigger than last year.

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  6. Ha HA HA gotta share this with my sister-in-law.

    Since I am not a beach bum and don't swim, I doubt I'll endure this torture. I don't think pop-eyed males,[adolescent, virile or senile], or even females, would enjoy looking at fat women in bikinis or formerly fat women with wrinkled, flabby skin on extremities as well as other usually concealed physical aspects. These less-than-attractive specimens appear to totally embalmed in seersucker.

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  7. nitwit
    Got to agree. I remember when I was a kid looking at the hefty tourists in bathing suits and thinging, "Boy, I'll never." Trouble is, I do love to swim. Guess I need to find a remote swimming hole or spring for a pool.

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  8. Beach attire sure has changed ... the one I wear must be 5 years old.

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  9. Believe it or not, I bought one today. It is like this:

    " a two-piece affair with a shorts style bottom and a loose blouse-type top. It was cheap ($33), comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it."

    A Walmart special. It wasn't what I wanted, but it will do until something better comes along. UGH.

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  10. Laura and I had a good laugh at all that. Ah, the awful reality of having a body! I was once a life drawing tutor, so I guess I could say "I have seen it all!" The best models that we had were either very thin or rather fat. The ones in between seemed to be the hardest to draw or paint for some reason. Some who were stately of figure projected a truly wonderful sense of timelessness and humanity, and it always felt a great privilege to be either a student or a tutor in those classes.

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  11. Robert
    Ah, you are still a puppy yet who works out doors and stays fit. Besides, men don't have all the areas to cover up we women have. You are lucky---enjoy.

    kenju
    Proud of you to have bitten the bullet. I've heard that even Heidi Klum hates shopping for swim suits. It is a horrid chore for women. Men just cover their privates and they are good to go.
    That style you got is probably the only thing besides cut off's and a tee that I could possibly pull off. Walmart you say--

    Peter,
    Thought Laura would laugh. It is something only a woman can truly understand. Life drawing huh? Weren't you lucky. Yea, I know, a bowl of fruit or a naked lady, same thing??

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