BATHING BLUES
I have just been through the annual pilgrimage of torture and humiliation known as buying a bathing suit. When I was a child in the 1950’s, the bathing costume for a woman with a mature figure was designed for a woman with a mature figure. It was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back, uplift and support and they did a darn good job. Today’s stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure chipped from marble.
The mature woman has a choice. She can either front up at the maternity department where she can try on a floral costume with a skirt [and come away looking like the hippo in 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 fluorescent 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 suits was developed [I believe] by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot. This gives you the added bonus that if you actually manage to lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks. No shark in its right mind would take a swipe at your passing midriff or it would immediately suffer whiplash.
With many a grunt and groan, I fought my way into the bathing suit but as I twanged the shoulder strap into place I gasped in horror – my chest had disappeared! Eventually I found one breast cowering under my left armpit. It took me awhile to find the other. I finally found it flattened beside my seventh rib. You see, the problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is meant to wear her breasts spread across her chest like a speed bump. This may be okay for flat-chested or perky-breasted young things, but for those of us with actual breasts this is akin to releasing dams that have been held back for years - once freed they can cause a lot of destruction, [especially to your ribs and peck muscles] as they head south. Well, 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 of it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom and sides. I looked like a lump of play-dough wearing undersize cling wrap. As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the puerile salesgirl popped her head through the curtains. "Oh, THERE you are!" she said as she admired the bathing suit on me. I whimpered that I wasn’t very impressed with the look of it as I quickly glanced down to find yet another part of me slowly seeping out [and just when I thought I had securely tucked it in]. With a bowed head [and a watchful eye] I asked her what else she could show me.
I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape. A floral two piece which gave the appearance of an oversize napkin in a serviette ring. I struggled into a pair of leopard skin bathers with a ragged frill and came out looking like Tarzan’s Jane on a bad day. I tried on a bright pink one with such a high-cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear it. Finally I found a costume that fit … a two-piece affair with shorts style bottoms and a halter-top. It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge friendly, so I bought it.
When I got home, I read the label which said, "Material may become transparent in water." Well, I’m determined to wear it anyway. I just have to learn to breaststroke in the sand.
by Victoria & Carol
This background created by me ~ check out AngelBreath Designs
