The Bathing Suit - For The Gals

[Ann]

Just found this. Author unknown. Hope it's not a repeat.

THE BATHING SUIT

Only girls would really understand this! (It is a true story written

by a lady to her friend after a swimsuit shopping expedition).

"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 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. It was built to hold

back and uplift and it 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 front up at 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 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, which give 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 in place, I gasped in horror - my bosom had disappeared!

Eventually, I found one bosom 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 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 curtains, "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 serviette ring. I struggled into a pair of

leopard skin bathers with ragged frill 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 it.

Finally, I found a suit that fit ... a two piece affair with 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! When I got home, I found a label that

said, "Material will become transparent in water."