June 2, 2022

Swimsuits are for Swimming

I bought a bathing suit online a while back, and it probably could have been a size bigger.

But I’m very pleased to announce that after about six weeks of consistent workouts via swimming laps, it finally mostly fits me properly.

Not because my body has changed at all, but because six weeks of wearing a bathing suit (and running in through the spinner) is going to stretch a garment out.

Six years into regular swimming, my relationship to bathing suits is much less fraught that it used to be. I don’t actually remember if it ever was so fraught, but this is such a common trope, women trying on bathing suits and hating their bodies, that it’s probably embedded in my DNA.

I do remember that buying a Speedo tankini when I was in university that quickly ended up with a hole in the bum.

I took it back to the store, and the clerk informed me that it had disintegrated because I’d been wearing it to swim.

“It’s not a swimming bathing suit,” she told me. “It’s a fashion bathing suit.”

And these days, my bathing suits have no style at all, basic sporty numbers I can find in my size on clearance. For a couple of summers, for style, I’ve bought a cheap but cute suit from Joe Fresh, but these became stretched out and unwearable so quickly that I’m not sure they’re really worth it.

These days how I look in a bathing suit is an idea that just never comes up.

(Although I took heart when I saw Yumi Nu on the cover of Sports Illustrated recently. Her swimsuit didn’t really fit either, and she still looked pretty fine.)

I honestly never ever think about how I look in a bathing suit, which is bonkers because I wear a bathing suit almost every day. Because a bathing suit is a bathing suit, tight and gaping, revealing. But I never think about how I look in a bathing suit because it doesn’t matter how I look like in a bathing suit.

What matters is what I do.

That I SWIM.

The transformation from object to subject is complete.