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...

No matter how colorful they are — and they are very colorful this year — buying a bathing suit will give you the blues. What can I say? A few adjectives spring 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,...