Candy Apple Women

Posted on | June 11, 2014 | 17 Comments

Over the weekend, a friend invited J and I to their pool. We got there early and set up our towels and picnic lunches and then crept slowly into the pool, letting the coldness soak in through our bathing suits. I’m not thin. I like to think of myself as “curvy” or maybe “average” and my friend is teeny-tiny. We both were wearing tankinis, me in swim shorts and her in a swim skirt. As families filed into the pool, I took note of the bathing suits, noticing the men in their swim trunks, bellies on display. I noticed the little girls and boys contentedly wearing their suits without the slightest pause. They were all different shapes and sizes. They were in brightly colored patterns and summery prints. Everything was fresh and bright and cheerful.

Then I noticed that around the pool, every mother there was wearing a black bathing suit. Regardless of height or age or weight or curves or straight thinness.

Every single mother was wearing black. It was as though we were all shouting out “I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE WEARING THIS BATHING SUIT BECAUSE I AM SO LARGE.”

There was, in fact, one girl in a bikini, perfectly tan, perfectly thin in all the perfect spaces. Her stomach was without lines. Her bathing suit was bright blue and stood out in the crowd. She looked exactly like she’d stepped off the cover of a women’s magazine.

She was fifteen, if that.

I looked down at my black top and my friend’s black skirt and I mentioned the color theme. She looked around. She sheepishly shrugged and so did I. Because black is slimming, right? Because as women, we’ve been brain-washed into believing that we must look fifteen to be beautiful.

Well guess what… we aren’t fifteen anymore and we aren’t SUPPOSED to look fifteen. We are supposed to have curves and lines and the tugs and pulls of a life well lived.

We’re all so scared, aren’t we, we women. We’re so scared that someone will notice that our bodies aren’t “perfect”, that they aren’t what the fashion industry and the movie industry and the television industry tell us they should be. We’re so scared to relax for a moment, to curve our spine and let loose our breaths because dear GOD what if a roll appears between the thickly suctioned layers of our “instantly swimming suit.” We are so invested in someone else’s definition of perfect that we’ve forgotten that we have our own voices, our own opinions, our own definition of perfection.

And you know what? It’s never going to change. Our sweet daughters who don’t currently care one bit what they look like in their clothes will one day suck in and sit straight. One day they will pinch and pull and turn sideways before a mirror to see if it’s acceptable… to see if they are acceptable. Because it is what they see from the women around them. If you think they don’t notice that we’re all wearing thick black bathing suits, you are sadly mistaken.

Is that what we really want? Do we want these young girls to grow up thinking they have to meet the definition of “perfect” or even “acceptable” to someone other than themselves? That they have to look like they stepped off the cover of a magazine before they step outside?

Because they will. If all they see around them are women who meet that “perfect” definition wearing bikinis and women who don’t, trying to hide in their suits, scared to show their imperfections… then they, too, will learn to hide. To cover up what makes them so perfectly unique and special.

I don’t want to see that happen to my niece or your daughter. I don’t want to reinforce the pattern that only the perfect can be in public.

Because as beautiful as that one fifteen year old was, as “perfect” as she seemed to be, she was not the real person who stood out to me that day. After we’d been there a while, in through the back gate, a family slid in, a boy and a girl and their parents. The father climbed into the pool with the kids as the mother set up their things. After setting up, she pulled off her cover-up to reveal a beautiful candy apple red bathing suit.

She wasn’t fifteen.

She had curves and lines and marks of a life well lived.

And she was so beautiful, a colorful flower amidst the sea of black suits and careful postures, that even my friend commented on her bathing suit choice.

That one woman was perfectly herself, perfectly content, and yes… perfectly gorgeous. And I hope that her daughter knows what an amazing gift her mother is giving her… the gift of being comfortable in her own skin; the gift of being happy to be out in the sun with her family, happy to be thirty-something and to LOOK thirty-something.

I wanted to be her, as I watched her splash with her kids. I wanted to be that happy and carefree.

So I went home and bought myself a candy apple red bathing suit.

And I am going to wear it proudly every chance I get. Because it’s hard to be an “imperfect” woman; and if I can’t change the “industries” who make REAL women feel bad about themselves, at least… at very least… I can change myself.

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