So recently I went bathing suit shopping with my husband. Who now has a greater understanding and also new form of appreciation and respect, for the art that is every women’s humiliation. Something that most men don’t have to experience. Or at least not to this extent. They complain we women have more in terms of choices when it comes to clothing, and this may be true, but I can tell you this… if they had to experience the sheer hell of trying to get into something that is nothing short of a high wire acrobatic outfit, including the underwires, they’d think twice about moaning!
When a woman is bathing suit shopping she’s presented with an overwhelming amount of disappointing choices. Well that’s if you’re not a size minus zero and have curves like the mountains of the Himalayas! You take your stance in front of a line or rack, of what appears to be a beautiful array of different colours and choices. You have high hopes and low expectations. But your mind races with excitement of what could be. You try to picture yourself in certain designs and styles. Quickly your arms are of full of different sizes, shapes and colours, You take a few different sizes of the same ones, just in case…but your thoughts aren’t quite rational. At this point in the hunt, you’re not thinking clearly and with rational thought processes. You still have that glimmer of hope and sheer will keeping you eager and open minded. In this moment you aren’t thinking about how quickly all of your high hopes will be crushed with the harsh truth…that is your body!
And yet you persevere! You still have a smile on your face, you are still calm with that little extra jump to your heart rate. The lovely sales lady is so patient and helping add to the stockpiling of unnerving disappointment, that will soon become a reality in your changing room. And then…it’s time. The hooks in your changing room can’t fit another hanger. And you think to yourself, “yeah, let’s just start there.” You look at all the possibilities and start with the pick that caught your eye first. And it begins…”HOW THE HELL DOESN’T THIS SIZE FIT!??? This is the size I wore last summer! I couldn't have put on that much weight…could I??? Or at least not to the point I look like I have swallowed the entire contents of Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory!!!”
You thought going into this whole horror story, that starting with the one piece, which by the way, is the “ in style” right now, is a good place to start. That it would hold all the unsightly layers in to create that lovely small waist effect. But boy were you wrong! You know the casing that comes on an actual sausage? The one that is used to hold in and keep tight all that yummy fatty goodness? Well turns out, that looking at yourself in that one piece, is like looking at the insides of the sausage without the casing! And in fact, all of YOUR fatty goodness is now on display, that is just ever so lightly covered with the casing of that beautiful one piece you once thought was a great idea.
But all hope is not lost. And moving on now to the two piece options. Starting with the bikini tops. You clip the top in front of you and turn it around to slip the shoulder straps up, but alas…as you are twisting that top around your torso, you can feel your skin ripping. And you instantly know, “fuck…this ain’t gonna work!” But you are damned and determined to at least get it on and up as a starting point for the series of letdowns to follow. After all, you gotta start somewhere, and lets face it, the one piece is no longer an option. Once up and straps properly tightened, you look at yourself in the mirror and notice right away. That not only is the underwire digging into your ribs, and giving you what you WISHED looked like the starting of an amazing set of abs, but it looks like you are housing a watermelon in one side of your top and a cantaloupe in the other. Why the hell are your tits looking like they are paternal twins??? Shouldn’t they be the same? Apparently NOT!
And it only gets worse with the bottoms. Matching or not, the tightness of the waistband and leg inserts, makes your stomach and thighs look like they will loose all range of motion, due to severe lack of circulation, if you wore these for any length of time. Keeping in mind, all of this is happening under the interrogation lighting that is in your changing room. I mean come on! Whoever thought that was a good idea was a dick! And just to add insult to injury, the lovely sales lady comes by to check on you and see if she can get you another size in anything. You want to respond with, “ YEAH! COULD YOU BRING ME A POOL COVER PLEASE?” At this point you are just so over it. You can feel the tears welling up in your eyes but you don’t want to give in to the emotions.
Your heart is now racing, not with excitement, but with the feelings of being pissed off. You can feel yourself on the verge of snapping but you breath through it. You just gotta get this straight jacket like ensemble off. And if you weren’t now sweating like you had just ran the New York Marathon( which you clearly haven't trained for), it would make this a whole lot easier. You reach your arms around your back to unclip this pretty little ( and by little, I mean so little you don't even know how you got into it to begin with), bikini top. But very suddenly you realise that you are sweating so badly, your emotions are running high and clearly you weren’t thinking rationally when you pulled this bikini top on to begin with. Because if you had, you would have realised that it seems like the only way out of it, would be to dislocate your shoulders.
At this point my husband is peaking over the top of my changing room door, trying his best to cheer me on. He could see that I was just trying to be polite to both him and the lovely sales lady. But I was so over it! All I could feel were the tears that formed in the shape of a bulge in my throat. And then it happened, I snapped! I starting handing all of my crushed hopes in the form of spandex, over the door to my husband, snapping at both him and the sales lady, “IM DONE!” My husband then looks at me with a tad bit of fright in his eyes and says, “ok so what do you think? I think you should get”…and he proceeds to tell me to get the bikini top that was his choice on the sales rack, that was my least favorite and the more expensive bikini top, that from now until the end of it’s life, I will need my husband to strap me into as though he is saddling a horse!
I then reluctantly of course give in to him, and also feel as though, this all couldn’t have been for nothing. I mean, I didn't put all of my unsightly bits and pieces on display, lock myself into a room that makes solitary confinement seem like a great idea, and give myself fabric burn, because this seemed like a great way to spend my Saturday! I needed a bathing suit damn it! And no matter how shitty it made me feel, let’s be honest, these tits of mine just weren’t going to fit into last years bikini tops. Not unless I wanted to sport them with my nips peaking over the top, like the vision of my husbands face over that changing room door.
So to the cash we went, where I could see the pity on the face of my lovely sales lady. And while my husband was paying for the last hour of my humility, I thanked the sales lady for putting up with me. I told her that I truly, “got it from my momma and proud of it”, and that even though I’d need a good stiff drink after the experience, that her help and patience were amazing! And that I’d be back, but maybe…for a sweater next time!
