Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Swimsuit Shopping

Sent to me by a friend with a sense of humor.  Knew I would need a bit of laughter after getting off of the plane.  Lupin is right, chocolate after facing Dementors is very helpful.  At the top of the escalator after going through airport security was a little stand selling chocolate.  No pat down and the milk chocolate pecan cluster felt so good on the inside.  Flying was much better this trip.  Enjoy

Forwarded email, I appreciate whoever the author is.  Thanks.

When I was a child in the 1950s, bathing suits for the mature figure were boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered.  They were built to hold back and uplift, and they did a great job.

Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.

The mature woman has a choice – she can either go to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus that escaped from Disney's Fantasia, or she can wander around every department store in town, trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of fluorescent 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 suits was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which gives the added bonus that, if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you will be protected from shark attacks, as any shark taking a swipe at your passing abdomen would immediately suffer whiplash.

I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place I gasped in horror.  My breasts had disappeared!
Eventually, I found one breast 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 relegated to having to wear her breasts spread across her chest like a speed bump.  I realigned my breasts into speed bump formation and lurched toward the mirror to make a full-view assessment.

The bathing 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 Playdoh wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out how to position the fabric to contain more of the escaping bulges, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, “Oh, there you are,” she said, admiring the bathing suit.

I replied that I wasn’t so sure about this one and asked what else she had to show me.

I tried on a cream-coloured crinkled suit that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two-piece that gave me the appearance of an oversized napkin squeezed into a serving ring.

I struggled into a pair of leopard-skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a bare midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.

I tried on a bright pink suit with such high-cut legs, I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

Finally, I found a suit that fit – a two-piece affair with a shorts-style bottom and a loose, blouse-type top.  It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it.

My ridiculous search finally had a successful outcome!

When I got it home, I found a label that read, “Material becomes transparent in water..”


(Hope your laughing by this time because life isn’t just about how to survive the storm; it’s also about how to dance in the rain!)

4 comments:

mulderfan said...

Great laugh!

Laurel Hawkes said...

I'm howling!!

CZBZ said...

Wow...if anything or anyone can make me laugh while talking about BATHING SUITS, that's an outright miracle.

ARGH

Thanks for the laugh!


Hugs,
CZ

Anonymous said...

LOLOLOLOLOLOL! I love this! People like to say oh, when you hit 30 it will a lot harder to lose weight. That might
be true but try over 40. Metabolism? What is metabolism? Oh, and everything shifts. I went from hour glass to apple. That is so not fair! I especially loathe those flowered skirted suits. Hello, I'm 40 something, not a bridal shower napkin!

Thanks for sharing. I'm gonna post this on facebook. If you want to be FB friends, send me an email. :)