I’ve been putting if off for a good two years and now the end is near. It’s time for me to retire my one-piece swimsuit that I purchased when Obama was president. Now, you might be thinking swimsuit shopping in March – why? Isn’t there at least two solid months before that trip on a bobsled to hell has to begin?
My response is a long-drawn-out sigh. Because here’s what I’ve learned in my decades of swimsuit purchasing – you can’t wait till the suits hit the clearance racks at Macy’s.
This is because when your goal is to find a suit that’s a one piece – as in one solid piece of fabric with no cut outs, peek-a-boobs, or any sort of high cut thigh shenanigans the pickings are slim and those suits go fast. Add in that I also require a suit with a lining and a modicum of chest support and you might as well be searching for Blackbeard’s treasure that’s been missing since 1718.
Upping the degree of difficulty is when you require all of the above in a swimsuit and yet don’t want to look like your body has been stuffed in a spandex sausage casing. Indeed, there are one-piece swimsuits out there that claim to be miracle workers at full coverage and fat compression and to those suits I yell a hearty – beware.
One of the biggest problems with these polyether-polyurea copolymer beasts is that they’re difficult to get on your body. As in they are exceedingly challenging to move in an upward motion past your calves due to all the elastane.
One time, and I’m not kidding here, I sprained a wrist trying to tug one of these suits up. I was huffing and puffing in the dressing room so loudly I felt like I was doing a one woman show of the Big Bad Wolf.
And that drama is nothing compared to the saga of trying to get one of these suits up in a bathroom when you’re wet and the suit is wet. It’s a perilous journey fraught with emotional and physical trauma. Yes, I was that woman at the city pool weeping so loudly in the restroom that someone outside my stall asked if they needed to call 911.
All of this is why when at the end of last summer my husband innocently asked me, “What’s wrong with your swimsuit?” I wanted to initiate bodily harm.
That’s not to say he didn’t have a point. My suit’s fabric has begun to wave the spandex flag of surrender. It’s not threadbare but it’s on the fast track. These facts spurred me to very nicely explain to my spouse that my suit was in a word – old.
His response was a perky, “Well, why don’t you buy a new swimsuit?”
Oh, yes if only it were that easy. For the past week I’ve been looking at swimsuits online and it has been agony. I find a decent suit that fits my qualifications and then I read deep into the description and curse. For example, I thought I had found my perfect suit and then discovered that was unlined for “greater freedom of movement.”
Is that code for this is swimwear for aspiring nudists?
Then there was a seersucker suit that looked terrific until I read that it had zero chest support because the “slight ruching of the seersucker provided lift.”
Umm, yeah, unless that ruching has superpowers I don’t think it’s going to get that job done.
So today I stand before you as a woman wondering if her aged one-piece has another summer left in it. I sure hope so because that’s how it’s looking for summer 2021.
Snarky in the Suburbs 