Author: TM Diep

Page 9

EGERIA

The Bottom Line

The author is unknown but this piece was supplied to Penny W. by Joanne, another member of Friday’s Fabulous Femmes

I have just been through the annual pilgrimage of torture and humiliation known as buying a swimming costume. When I was a child in the 1950s, the swimming costume 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 good job.
Today’s stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip. The mature woman can either front up at the maternity department and try on a floral costume with a skirt – coming away looking like a hippopotamus who has escaped from Disney’s Fantasia – or she can wander around every run-of-the-mill department store trying to find something vaguely from what amounts to a designer range of fluorescent rubber bands.
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 swimming costumes 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 are protected from shark attacks – any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.
I fought my way into the swimming costume, but as I twanged the shoulder strap into place, I gasped in horror – my breast had disappeared! Eventually, I found one bosom 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 swimming costumes have no cup bras. The mature woman is meant to wear her breasts spread across her chest like speed humps. I realigned my speed humps and lurched towards the mirror to take a full view assessment. The swimming costume fitted all right, but unfortunately, it only fitted 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 playdough wearing undersized cling wrap. As I tried to work out where those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtains, “Oh there you are!” she said, admiring the swimming costume… 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 which gave the appearance of an oversized napkin in an undersized napkin ring. I struggled into a leopard skin costume with a ragged frill and came out looking like Tarzan’s Jane pregnant with triplet and having a rough day. I squeezed into a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning. I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.
Finally I found a costume that fitted… a two piece affair with shorts style bottom a loose blouse type top. It was cheap, comfortable and bulge friendly, so I bought it.
When I got home, I read the label. It said “Material may become transparent in water”.

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