I shuffle out of the dressing room and hand my pile of tried-on garments over to the fitting room attendant. "Did you have any luck with those?" she asks politely. A tight smile and small snort of disgust escapes me as I reply, "Not this time." Something catches my eye in the pile of bathing suits that she is sorting on the counter. "Oh! Does that one happen to be a size large, by chance?" She glances down at the swatch of colored fabric in her hand, and gives a mildly sympathetic shake of her head. "It's a small. Sorry." Psh. No, you're not. I think to myself as I stalk bitterly towards the front of the store. I usually feel bad for fitting room attendants. It's a thankless job, counting hangers and passing out those stupid little plastic numbers, re-hanging garment after garment for hours at a time, only to watch the items that you've just put away come back to the dressing room moments later and end up in a messy heap once again. But not today. Today I feel a rather smug satisfaction at the thought that the bathing suits I'd left behind the counter were making someone else miserable besides me. That's not very nice, Gina. I shrug to myself. It's not very nice. Such is life.
It's nearly spring, once again. And here, in the great frozen state of North Dakota, that means two things: 1) The city of Fargo is about to suffer a major case of spring fever. This usually involves a lot of yard work, as well as hundreds of people walking around in shorts and flip-flops even though it's only 50 degrees. And 2) Summer is just around the corner. This means that the tanning salons are being flooded with ghostly white individuals who've spent the past few months shielding their delicate skin from the frigid winter elements. This also means it's time to start shopping for bathing suits, and waking up to the harsh reality of looking at our bodies, practically naked in dressing room mirrors. Every extra Christmas cookie, every celebratory New Year's drink, and every hastily sneaked piece of Valentine's chocolate will hide no longer. This, my friends, is the reckoning.
My mother was very modest when it came to clothing, and as a result, I was never allowed (or even interested) to wear a bikini as a child. As a matter of fact, I wasn't even brave enough to don my first two-piece until halfway through college. I'd gone through a difficult breakup, and as a giant nose-thumb to the ex who'd told me point blank that I wasn't built to wear such things, as well as to my conservative upbringing, I decided to throw caution to the wind and let it all hang out one 4th of July weekend. I was surprised at the result. No one threw eggs at me or laughed hysterically as I walked by. I had a great time with my friends, both male and female. I realized that it didn't matter what I looked like in my bathing suit, because the people I cared about cared about me, and not my so-called physical imperfections. Ironically, back in the days when I was most insecure was probably the best I'd ever looked in a bikini.
Fast-forward fourteen years. That brings us to today, where I am suddenly a 35-year-old female, wishing desperately that I had the body I so loathed in my youth. Having birthed a child eight months ago isn't helping the situation much, either. Although the baby weight is all gone, it seems that things didn't exactly go back to the way they were before. Same size, but...different shape.
In a few short weeks, I am about to embark upon my first ever girls trip. Five girlfriends and I will strap on our traveling shoes and board a cruise ship from Miami to the Bahamas. This is obviously cause for some serious shopping, which is what landed me in that despicable dressing room with a stack of horrible bathing suits in the first place. What was I thinking? Even if we weren't just coming off winter, and even if I hadn't recently given birth, bikini shopping is the WORST! It's hard to hide flaws when nothing is actually covered. I decided to ditch the bikinis and give a selection of one-piece suits a try. Well, that was a mistake. Those adorable one-pieces with the sides cut out? The ones that look amazingly sexy yet still respectable? Like all of those swimsuit models in the Victoria's Secret catalog are actually just regular women with high-paying day jobs and the pictures in the magazine are simply candids from their family vacation to Florida? Yeah...not so much. Somehow, through some sort of gaping hole in the laws of physics, more material is actually less flattering. I felt like those "sexy" cutouts were designed exclusively to highlight my flaws. Like my own personal sorority hazing, where the senior girls make you strip down to your underwear in front of everyone and circle your fat spots with a Sharpie. Nothing will ever look good enough, because no matter how good I look, someone else will look better. I realize that this is ridiculous, but it's simply the female condition. We are bred to foster insecurities, and spend our entire lives working on ways to overcome them. Most of us give up "overcoming" and instead find a way to just deal with it. Rather like my 21-year-old self who threw caution to the wind to don her very first bikini, my 35-year-old post-baby self is going to have to take the same leap.
As I stomped angrily to my car, I thought back to the suits I'd tried on. I exhaled my breath in a long silent whistle and steadied my thoughts. Maybe, just maybe the pink and purple one would look halfway decent if I could find it in the proper size... I ordered it online as soon as I got home, along with one more suit for good measure. After all, even if I'm not entirely thrilled with my resulting appearance, it's really the only excuse I need to spring for a cute sundress cover-up. It turns out that my grown-up self know a secret truth that my 21-year-old self had to learn from experience: after all the muss and fuss, the hemming and hawing, the moaning and wailing, after ALL of that nonsense, comes clarity. No one is perfect, and it is a waste of energy to expect perfection where none truly exists. Life is about the experiences, not the appearances. In the end, it's just a bathing suit. And the reality is that the only person who truly cares how I look wearing it is me. I don't have a thing to prove to anyone except myself.
So. When the time comes for my my girls and I to drop our towels by the pool on that cruise ship, I can embrace the certainty that a couple of muffin tops isn't going to make one shred of difference in how much fun we have. Hand me some sunscreen and a margarita, and let the memories make themselves.
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