Trying to buy a swim suit

Trying to find a bathing suit at the store yesterday was a horrifying experience. It truly was. I was getting myself all geared up to write about it when I remembered I had read recently about someone else who had written their experience. I cannot possibly put into words the things that she described so accurately. So, I am choosing to send you her version as it almost exactly resembles my experience. Enjoy!

Buying a New Swimming Suit

author unknown

I have just been through the annual pilgrimage of torture and humiliation knownas buying a
bathing suit. When I was a child in the 1940s, the bathing suit 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 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 suit 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 FLEXIBLE rubberbands. 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 suits was developed, I believe, by NASA to
launch small rockets from a slingshot, giving 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 any shark taking a swipe at your passing
midriff would immediately suffer whiplash. I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I
twanged the shoulder strap into place, I gasped in horror - myn bpsom had disappeared.
Eventually I found one 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 suit 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-Doh
wearing 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 sooo YOU!" she
said, admiring the suits. 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 that gave the appearance of an oversize
napkin in a serviette ring. I struggled into a pair of leopard-skin bathers with 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 suit with such a
high-cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear it.

Finally I found a suit that fit. A two-piece affair, with shorts-like 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 transparentin water,' but I'm determined to
wear it anyway. I just have to learn to do the breaststroke in the sand.