The female body is always on display. We live in a culture where every manner of bodily embellishment is possible but what is not possible is closing down the display. There are women that try. They cover and camouflage with baggy clothing or they stand in clothing stores slipping garments over their own because they are too terrified to confront the mirror in the dressing women. I was in the bathing suit section of a department store the other day and I watched a woman do this. She put a bathing suit on over her pants and shirt and told her mother it was because she hates dressing rooms. I interpreted this to mean that she was content with what she imagined she looked like in the bathing suit, that the picture in her imagination would save her from the mirror. Why was she afraid of the mirror? She was afraid because the mirror oftentimes does not reflect reality but instead becomes a mechanism for the mind to re-process what’s actually there and reflect back what it thinks society sees. There is no mirror image that women are more terrified of than the reflection of themselves in a bikini.
Just ask anyone in the fitness business and they’ll tell you their busiest months are right before the summer. It is in those months leading up to endless sunshine that the women’s magazines are filled with endless pages that promise to help you pick out the perfect bathing suit. Pear-shaped? Wear black on the bottom. Too small in the chest area? Find a bikini top with embellishment. Let’s consider this for a moment. There are actually pages and pages of magazines trying to help you find less than a quarter of a yard of fabric that will help to camouflage the parts of your body that don’t conform to the proportional ideal. There is no escape from your flaws. In fact, even when you are wearing the least, you must make sure what you are wearing, even if it is miniscule, helps to hide you. Yet, we don’t question the sagacity of the advice promising to offer us body image salvation by hiding us. Yet there has never been a magazine that promises to help you find a bathing suit that makes you happy because you love purple or guarantees the silver beads on this particular bathing suit will make smile when the sun hits them. Bathing suits are meant to hide your flaws, not help you to enjoy swimming or sunning. And I am sick of being told to hide. I am a whole person and I am not looking to use a bathing suit or any other piece of clothing to hide parts of me you might not like. Who are YOU anyway? Does this judgmental YOU even exist? I suspect that YOU don’t exist. That in fact, YOU are a collective creation, a joint manifestation of insecurity that will only exist if we keep buying magazines that tell us how to hide bits and pieces of ourselves. So, for the first time in the history of my life, I took my pants off at the beach and I let someone photograph me in my bathing suit, head to toe, not just the flattering parts. Was it difficult? Absolutely. Have I resolved my fear of bathing suits? Probably not completely. But I’ll put on my bikini tomorrow and keep trying.
Advertisement
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
