A New Bathing Beauty Suit

Before heading off to another Memorial Day weekend in fabulous Sunland, I of course had to purchase yet another bathing suit. By the amount of swimwear I’ve accumulated in the last three years, one would think that I just love to prance around half naked all the time. Not exactly, but summertime events such as the Sand Bar or Seafair are like bathing suit fashion shows–God forbid you wear the same suit two days in a row.

I haven’t purchased a quality suit in a couple years (by quality, I mean anything outside of the $40 suits Target offers in approximately one million styles and colors), so I bit the bullet and headed to Macy’s to purge the slightly more expensive swim department.

I accumulated probably 30 bathing suits before heading to the fitting rooms to try them on. While I was throwing off tops and bottoms, cringing, smiling and turning in the mirror, I could hear two other girls in the dressing room next to me.

“This one doesn’t make me want to puke,” the girl trying on swimsuits said to her by standing friend. (Us females usually like to drag someone along for an opinion). “I don’t look terribly fat in this one,” she said when she put the next one on. And on and on with every negative phrase including fat, ugly, bulge, stomach. Blah, blah, blah.

Now, I saw these girls in the department when I was picking out suits for myself, and both of them were probably 19 years old and 30 pounds lighter than me. It overwhelmingly depressed me–every girl is guilty of it, but it’s just so damn sad that we have such a low self opinion of our bodies. And even if you’re 115 pounds, you can’t be happy with how you look in a swimsuit. Self esteem and body image gets better with age, but then you look back and only wish you could or would have been happy when you had the body you did at 19.

I wanted to shout to them over the dressing room, “I’LL TRADE YOU!”

But then again, they probably wouldn’t have understood why I’m self conscious either because clearly I look exactly like this in my new suit:

(I like the criss-crossing in the back. How bout you?)

Currently Feeling: Chipper and cheerful. Probably cause I fell asleep at 9 p.m.
Currently Anticipating: Spa day and the Sex and the City movie tomorrow at Big Picture with my marketing team.
Currently Dreading: Cleaning my room and locating my car key.

Nerd Alert

Last week I had my portrait taken for my job. You know that dorky company photo that everyone is going to view in the employee directory, including Bob McFarlin in Saskatoon and every other random I work with all the time, but will probably never meet face to face with? (I always look up people when I work with them, just to see if my impression matches their photo. I know you do it too.) Well, in my first impression, I don’t want to have dark roots, be pale or chubby looking. After all, I’d hate for people to have the reaction that I have when I open some people’s directory photo. I could laugh for days at some of those… endless and cheap entertainment, I tell ya.

I haven’t had my portrait taken since like, well, 1999 to be exact—the spring before senior year of high school. But even those were full-body shots in street clothes. Not these dorky head and shoulder shots in business attire. I have to admit; I was more than a little portrait-taking out of practice. The photographer was super nice, but kept shouting, “I’ll make you look years younger! Now, massage the sides of your smile, it will make you look years younger! This lighting will make you look years younger!” I’m not exactly sure how old he thought I was, but yelling at me that his fantastic photography skills were going to make me “look years younger” didn’t exactly put a smile on my face.

Geez buddy, I’m only 26. What are you promising? Middle school regression?

And here I am:

Precious. Just precious, I tell you.

Currently Feeling: Blah all the time for no explainable reason.
Currently Anticipating: Mini golf and brewskies.
Currently Reading: “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer.