The Season of Near-Nakedness

Women of ‘substance’ and the annual question of how much to reveal

I don’t know about yours, but my thighs are not ready for summer.

This fact was revealed in early spring when I glanced at them on the way into the pool. 

The only good thing about noticing that my cellulite wasn’t gone after six weeks at the gym and pool is that no one there cares what other people’s thighs look like. People there want health. Sheltering Arms ought to advertise this acceptance along with its therapeutic expertise.

Acceptance does not prevail at most pools and gyms where people – and by “people,” I mean “women” – obsess about having to expose flesh to the general public or, worse, to people who know our names. 

No wonder I couldn’t coax anyone of “substance” to be quoted for this column. 

This is the only place I’ve been in recent years where people occasionally ask where I get my bathing suits because they are “cute.”

We’re talking quite a bit of printed Lycra here.

The tankini top squashes two bosoms into a “mono-boob,” a shelf-like protuberance that bounces up and down during water aerobics unless you cross your arms over it to keep it under control. The bottom is shorts that are long enough to cover half the cellulite plus that annoying “pooch” on the inner thighs, which is another area that hasn’t yet shrunk. 

This outfit should properly be called a bathing costume. The only things lacking are stays and a girdle.

Still, I know what they mean. I’m grateful to have located my stash.

Most stores have bikinis, tank suits and two-piece “slimming” designs for women who would look good in anything even if they don’t think so. For boomers who have let themselves go?

Bikinis? Halter tops with short shorts? Tank suits? Not in quite a while.

I bugged Catherines, the zaftig women’s clothing store at Merchants Walk, for about two weeks to find out when the shipment of bathing attire would arrive. Then I bought three. Next year, tiny designers may make “improvements” that shrink and shorten.

But it’s not just swimsuits that are a problem in this season of near nakedness.

Belly bulge, butt droop, neck wattle and wing-like arm undercarriage that hibernated under winter camouflage emerge when it is so hot that people just want to run naked in the streets. And they do. Just go to any mass gathering of American humanity and see for yourself.

It is not a pretty sight, viewing those of us whose inactivity and midlife hormones put the brakes on weight loss.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why some full-figured folks love shrink tank tops that leave a naked midriff roll oozing out at the “waist” while their cleavage heaves forward as if straining to escape its scanty confines.

Or why they think a suit jacket three sizes too small looks chic. More like mom grabbed something from her middle-school daughter’s closet. 

Apparently the designers who create fashions to fit models think the same garment – enlarged – looks stylish on someone who wears XL and up. Usually, not.

Meanwhile, how come guys seem to cruise through life convinced they’re still stud muffins despite their beer-cooler-size guts? 

Perhaps they live in the fantasy world of early morning infomercials, where beauteous babes stroke the six-pack abs that male models allegedly acquired by using the device being hawked.

I suspect that if ordinary guys buy the machine it will end up as a clothes rack. Like my treadmill, on which I store out-of-season clothes in Space Bags. 

No wonder my thighs aren’t ready for summer. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It’s sure sticking to me.

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Betty Booker wrote on boomers, etc., for 34 years until taking early retirement from the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia.