Buying A Bathing Suit. Again.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Woman Around Town about buying a bathing suit, and had so much good feedback from it that I included it in my book, I Can’t Believe I’m Not Bitter, available (ahem) on Amazon. I was going to write a new article this year but decided to run the original because a) I am too demoralized from my latest misadventure at Lord & Taylors to write anything,  b) I ‘ve rerun some form of the original every year around this time and tradition is so important when all else has failed, and c)nothing has changed!

BUYING A BATHING SUIT

Somehow I feel that I don’t have to say another word. And yet, you know I will.

A few adjectives do come springingly to mind: 
Dreaded, humiliating, humbling (not exactly the same as humiliating), life-negating, tiring, stressful.
(Please feel free to join in!)

And then there are the nouns:
Disaster, failure, disappointment, compromise, defeat.

The sentences might as well be 20 to Life:
I came, I tried, I wept.
I came, I saw myself in the 3-way mirror, I fled.
I came, I saw a lot of suits, none of them fit.

Bathing Suit Designers Are Sadists.

Every year, they decide that a certain style is in, and you’re stuck with it whether it fits or not.  
It never fits.

Take the halter top. If you’re flat on top, it just lies there, looking useless. If you’re large, you hang out. You want to hang out on the beach, not out of your bathing suit.
I hate halters.

For a while, the bottoms were being cut higher and higher, higher and higher. This was supposed to “elongate the leg.” What it did was show more cellulite. Now, bottoms are cut a bit lower and some suits even have ruffles on the bottom. Remember the pictures in children’s books of elephants in tutus? You will, if you try on one of these.

The people who run the bathing suit departments are also sadists.

There are so many suits, you can’t believe that there isn’t ONE that will work. There isn’t one. Nevertheless, you take 20 or 30 into the dressing room.   
One lives in hope.

And that’s where the real heartache begins . . .

Because the people who design dressing rooms are the worst kind of sadists. The lighting makes everything (and I mean everything!) look absolutely hideous.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse it does.

If the top fits, the bottom doesn’t.
If the cut is good, the color isn’t.
If the style is nice, they don’t have your size.

One positive note:
After years of two-piece suits that just didn’t work, they invented the tankini. I like this, because they’re cooler (literally and figuratively) than one-piece suits, and they’re much more convenient when going to the loo. Also, when you’re lying in the sun in a prone position where things don’t hang out so much, you can raise the bottom of the top (is that clear?) and get some sun on your midriff.

Remember, when all else fails: tanned flab looks better than pale flab.

Oh, well. As you know, here at I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M NOT BITTER, we always like to put a positive spin on even the most dire situation.

After much searching, I finally got a cute top from Nautica (tankini, of course, because it’s easier to deal with in the loo) from Lord & Taylor that goes with the navy blue bottom from the suit I got from Saks last year. It’s not perfect, but it works. But if that doesn’t work for you, or if you’d like a spin of your own, try these on for size:

•I never liked the beach anyway. 
•The mountains are so much nicer this time of year.
•No one else is looking that good either.•He loves me for my mind.
•The cover-ups are really cute this year.  

Or my personal favorite:
•After an hour in the sun, I won’t give a damn.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ADVENTURES WITH BATHING SUITS.
IT HELPS TO SHARE.

Note: Previous posts, With A Thong In My Heart, and Bathing Suit Blues, have appeared in summers past.