let me tell you - No. 13
On bathing suits
It’s summer, friends. My very most favorite better than all the rest season of the year. And while many of you in your various places around the country and the world have already seen 3-digits in your temperatures, I’d like to commemorate the fact that the Pacific Northwest just broke into the 70s (oh hey there, JUNE) by telling you a little story about what it’s like to be a 37-year-old mom of six on the hunt for a bathing suit that doesn’t make her look and feel like a 37-year-old mom of six.
You see, my swimsuit shopping begins like all of my clothing shopping begins – that is, with zero style at baseline, coupled with little to no thought or preparation other than what is under $25. I mean, how hard could this be?
My bathing suit complications began at the same age it gets complicated for almost every girl: 14. It was those early adolescent eyes that started to see my body mostly in one way, that is, how it looked compared to someone else’s. The verdict was always the same: my body was wrong. My stomach was always rounder, my thighs were always bigger, and the back acne that plagued me from 1999-2002 gave no support whatsoever in my pursuit of body security.
Still, I’ve come to appreciate all my body has done for me, and truly, gratitude helps to crowd out insecurity. Plus, as a significant part of my healing and mental health, I have been working out harder in the last six months than I have in the last six years. I rarely miss a day on the Peloton – because it’s where I work out angst and close my eyes to pray hundreds of one sentence prayers and challenge myself in new ways. I’ve added strength training to my routine. I did Emma Lovewell’s Crush Your Core Challenge twice. What I’m saying is this: I’m gratueful for my body. And I showed up to exericise with new fervor in 2022 because my heart and mind needed it.
What I’m also saying is that I was hoping my abs would notice it by lake season.
Today, even though I have tripled the effort to get back to pre-pregnancy baby weight zone, I am approximately 10 pounds (if I’m dehydrated I can get that down to 8 pounds) heavier than I was right before getting pregnant with Braylen in May of 2021.
So, there’s the backstory. I’m killing myself to work up a good sweat every day but I can’t stop eating sourdough or cutting sugar out of my coffee. Apparently you are supposed to do both of those things around 35 but I just turned 37 and I say no. YOLO.
(And this, friends, is the girl who walked into Target thinking she could walk out with a decent swimsuit 15 minutes later.)
At first the displays looked promising. In many stores, advertisers are embracing the body positive movement and both the models in pictures and the mannequins wearing the swimsuits are real people, you know, with actual body fat. I’m here for this, and so glad Harper and Ava will see a lot more soft curves on women in magazines than I remember seeing. But I will say, no matter how body positive the marketing, the suits never quite look on me as they look in pictures. I will get back to this.
I don’t do dressing room mirrors and flourescent lighting because I protect my peace, so I bought 7 items to take home: 3 different tops and 3 different bottoms of mix and match two-piece suits, and a one-piece. Surely, surely, I would find something in this bag that worked. Nothing did. I’m some body-size combination of small and medium and large depending on the zone, and am I the only one who feels like the Target medium is just, I don’t know, inconsistent across clothing? And bless it, those swimsuits just are not designed in consideration of the mama who has nursed five babies. We are, apparently, not the muse here.
So I went to Instagram next. I had seen super cute advertisements for high-waisted two-piece suits which I looked at on the smiling ladies wearing them and thought, perfect. Cover and flaten the tummy, look fashionable while you do. I will say again here that the suits never quite look on me as they look in pictures. That tummy I was trying to cover, pulling on the high-waist suit was basically like taking a big red marker and drawing a bullseye on it. I swear it somehow accentuated everything I intended to flaten. And a high-waisted suit from behind? Friends, it just looks confusing.
Y’all. I am convinced now that the high-waisted swimsuits market is one gigantic optical illusion, and I believe this because when I told my Instagram friends about my purchase and the hard no I gave myself with one look in the mirror, I had more than 50 DMs telling me some rendition of “Me, too!” or “It looked like an adult diaper on me!” or “Returned mine right away!” and I’m like, Why didn’t I consult the people first?!
If you’re counting, that’s nine swimsuit options and every single one either tightened in the wrong area or didn’t tighten nearly enough. In the swimsuits’ defense, though, I’m in a tough stage of life (37-year-old mom of six) to make me feel content half-naked, but all nine went back to their respective homes. One evening, as I was texting my sis, Ashlee, about all of my swimsuit woes, in an act of selfless love and friendship, she spent 30 minutes live texting and google searching with me, providing real time feedback on my ideas and reminding me which direction my boobs trend now and how that may not translate well to certain cuts, despite my optimistic “what about this one?!” screen shots. She also kindly suggested I may need to spend more than $19.99 because like a lot of things in life, when it comes to swimsuits, you get what you pay for. She directed me
here, and while I did purchase three different suits to try on and loved them all (turns out some places do design with the mama who has nursed a few babies in mind), I landed on this one and am so, so happy with it. I would have kept the other two but you know, I was already above my historic swimsuit budget of $25 and I have to go to Costco later for snacks.
So friends, after 12 purchases and nearly $400 in returns, I’m saying it: I’m comfortable in my skin this summer. I realize that has as much to do with my mind as it does with my actual body but still, wearing something that cuts in certain places better than others doesn’t hurt.
With all my heart, I wish you traveling mercies on your swimsuit shopping journey this summer, and a good (realistic) friend to live text your search with.
