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Swimsuit season is time for hiding places
Web posted Saturday, April 2, 2005
By Karin Gillespie
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You begin to hear the distant drumbeats in March, but by April the message is louder than a brass band.
Put down that leftover marshmallow Peep, back away from the chocolate bunny, it's swimsuit season!
Yes, time to adorn that white, beached-whale body with tiny pieces of brightly-colored Lycra.
Swimsuit season is such a big deal in America that you'd think the United States was a small tropical island populated exclusively by surfers and beach-volleyball enthusiasts.
Women's magazines abandon celebrity coverage and devote entire issues to choosing the best swimsuit.
Are you an eggplant? Wear a skirted suit with vertical stripes. An apple? Try a high-cut suit to show off your legs. A watermelon? Wear black and pray for rain.
The whole idea is to create elaborate optical illusions so people will be fooled into thinking you're a supermodel who subsists solely on carrot sticks and Evian water.
When their swimsuits fail to camouflage flaws, women begin to rely on other "helpers," such as barricading themselves with a fortress of ice coolers or covering up trouble spots with the use of strategically placed beach balls.
The key is to stay in one place - underwater or spread out on a lounge chair. If you get up and walk, you risk thigh jiggle, a wandering swimsuit or an unflattering rear view. (Many women opt to walk backward into the ocean because of the last peril.)
I wore a bikini in my 20s, a tankini in my 30s, and, now in my 40s, I'm looking for a tent-kini.
"Where do Amish women buy their swimsuits?" I wonder.
To me a swimsuit is essentially waterproof underwear. I wouldn't prance around the neighborhood in my Hanes Everyday, so why should I parade around complete strangers in next to nothing just because there's a large body of water nearby?
Men, of course, have none of these worries. They don't fret about being apples or eggplants, they assume they are brick houses and strut around the beach accordingly. To them, swimsuit season means ogling season. Time to get out the binoculars.
If it were up to men, it would always be swimsuit season. Winter would simply mean fur bikinis or thermal thongs. In fact, men probably wouldn't mind if life was one big Charlie's Angels episode in which women did everything, including the occasional crime-fighting, in a bikini.
I finally garner enough courage to step a foot inside a swimsuit department and gaze at the racks of stamp-size suit options.
When the saleswoman asks me what kind of support I'm looking for, I say, "Steel girders."
I choose a few suits to try on but as soon as I enter into the dressing room, I hear the music from Psycho's shower scene in my head, and I slowly back out. I'm not remotely sane or thin enough to endure another swimsuit season.
"Where do you want to go for Masters Week?" my fiance asks.
"Somewhere there isn't water," I say.
Next year, I vow I'll be ready for swimsuit season. I'll start exercising in December. I'll go on a rice-cake diet.
But this year, if you see me at the beach, I'll be the one in head-to-toe flannel, camped out behind a sand dune.
AUGUSTA RESIDENT KARIN GILLESPIE IS THE AUTHOR OF BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR. SHE CAN BE REACHED THROUGH HER WEB SITE AT WWW.KARINGILLESPIE.COM.
--From the Sunday, April 3, 2005 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
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