'Tis the Season - Swimsuit Time
I have just been through the annual pilgrimage of torture and humiliation
known as buying a bathing costume. 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 - boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as
engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift and they did a damn 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 costume 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 fluoro 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 costumes 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 a shark taking a swipe at your passing
midriff would immediately suffer whiplash. I fought my way into the bathing
costume, but as I twanged the shoulder strap into 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 hump.
I re-aligned my speed hump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full-view
assessment. The bathing costume fitted all right, but unfortunately it only
fitted 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 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
YOU!" she said, admiring the bathers. 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 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
pair with such a high-cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to
wear them.
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", but I'm determined to wear it anyway. I just have to
learn to breaststroke in the sand.
