Purchasing a Bathing Suit

[Guest guest]

This one is for the women in our group. ;-) Have a great day,

Purchasing a Bathing Suit

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 1940s, the bathing suit for a woman with a mature figure

was designed for a woman with a mature figure: boned, trussed,

and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered.

They were built to hold back and uplift, 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 and try on a floral suit with a skirt,

coming away looking like a hippopotamus 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 FLEXIBLE 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, giving the added bonus that if you manage to actually

lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks.

The reason for this is that 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

into place, I gasped in horror - my bosom had disappeared.

Eventually I found one 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 bosom spread

across the chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump

and lurched toward the mirror to take a full-view assessment.

The 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-Doh wearing undersize cling wrap. As I tried to work out

where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent

salesgirl popped her head through the curtains, " Oh, they are

sooo YOU! " she said, admiring the suits. 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 that 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 a black number with a

midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning. I tried on a

bright pink suit with such a high-cut leg I thought I would have

to wax my eyebrows to wear it.

Finally I found a suit that fit. A two-piece affair, with

shorts-like 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,

but I'm determined to wear it anyway. I just have to learn to

do the breaststroke in the sand.

Author Unknown