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JOKES |
Swimsuits
Another woman's musings on the hunt for
a bathing suit:
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 1950s 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 darn good job. Today's
stretch fabrics are designed for the pre-pubescent 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
that 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 the chest like a speed bump. I
realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take
a full view assessment. The bathing costume 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 undersize cling
wrap.
As I tried to work out where all those
extra bits had come from, the pre-pubescent salesgirl popped her
head through the curtains "Oh, there you are!" she said. I 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.
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