I read a survey that listed Making a Public Presentation as the number one fear of adults. Theyâre wrong. I donât know what menâs biggest fears are but I can certainly tell you the number one fear for women. Itâs not spiders, itâs not mice, itâs not even that slimy clump of hair and goo that you have to pull out of the bathtub drain when the water wonât go down. The biggest fear is trying on bathing suits.
We avoid it as long as we can. My husband doesnât understand the trauma that women feel when we consider going to buy a new suit. He canât understand the difference between buying shoes and buying a bathing suit.
Itâs easy for him, when summer starts, he just pulls out last yearâs bathing suit, tries it on and if it doesnât fit any more, he goes out and buys a new one. He looks at a few and fifteen minutes later he has a new bathing suit. In fifteen minutes, I havenât even decided what size Iâm looking for. (Iâm sure that the sizes get smaller every year â thatâs the only explanation I can think of when the size that I wore last time I bought a bathing suit doesnât fit anymore.)
This year I knew I had to buy a new bathing suit and I looked at one with a little skirt.
I was intrigued because it was advertised as a way to âcamouflage problem areasâ. Unfortunately their idea of camouflage and my idea were very different. I was expecting an actual skirt. What I saw was a little sash of material strategically placed to make my hips look even bigger. Though in all fairness, in order to camouflage my difficult areas, I would probably have to wear a suit of armor.
A few years ago a company came out with a ârevolutionaryâ bathing suit that let you get a tan right through the material. Great, more uncomfortable places for me to get a painful sunburn. What would be really revolutionary is a bathing suit that would make me look 15 pounds thinner.
The worst part about buying bathing suits is trying them on. I have to get undressed in front of a fun-house mirror with a 200-watt light bulb exposing every cookie and cupcake I ate over the winter (including the ones that I only licked the icing off to save calories). Just thinking about it gives me the shivers that only a chocolate bar can soothe.
Over the years, Iâve developed some rules for bathing suit shopping:
1) Put it off as long as possible.
2) Donât go shopping right after you eat â that tiny bite of cake you have for dessert can make the difference between a size 10 and a size 14.
3) Donât go shopping right before you eat. It will ruin your appetite.
4) Donât go shopping if you have anything else you can possibly do instead such as scrubbing out the inside of the chimney or painting the roof.
5) Never, never, never go shopping with a small child who is likely to loudly say things in the dressing room like, âMommy why is your skin squishing out of the side of the bathing suit? Is it supposed to look like that?â
Even though I dislike it, I eventually have to give in and buy a bathing suit otherwise Iâll never get into the pool to cool off. Once I get over the shock of buying a bathing suit Iâve got to deal with my second biggest fear â wearing shorts in public.
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Laura Browne is the author of a practical & easy-to-use book for women, Why Canât You Communicate Like Me? How Smart Women Get Results At Work. To register for her Free Teleconferences on various topics such as: Are You An Invisible Woman? How To Get Heard, go to inyourfaceink.com (This book is available at the website and at Barnes & Noble online.)
When Laura isnât writing, she helps women be more successful through WOMEN Unlimited, a nationally recognized resource for cultivating leadership excellence, women-unlimited.com
(This article was originally printed in Cranberry Magazine.)
