TIS THE SEASON-- SWIMSUIT TIME

'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.