The latest in travel fashion: harpoon resistent beachwear

July 9, 6:18 AMPhiladelphia Beach ExaminerKimberly Mackey

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Hey - is that my cocktail napkin?

Well, it’s here – the moment we’ve all been dreading. Yes, folks, “Kim’s Annual Quest for a Bathing Suit” season has officially begun.

I know what you’re all thinking. You’re thinking, “Come on, Kim – it’s July! We already have our bathing suits. Where have you been?”

I’ll tell you where I’ve been. I’ve been hunkering down under a ginormous box of chocolate chip cookies, the kind you get at ginormous discount warehouses, in the “I Have a Ginormous Need To Drown Myself In Pity” aisle. Nibbling my way through fear, sadness, humiliation and regret, all while wearing the same black skirted suit I’ve worn for ten years, thank you, which has been more loyal to me than any friend I can think of.

Before you become too impressed and say things like “Gee, Kim - at least you can still fit into the same suit!” let me set the record straight. It is not because I have maintained the same weight all this time - it’s just that my suit has stretched along with me. It has no choice if it wants to remain on active duty. It knows that if it doesn’t defy physics and restrain from bursting open like a popped balloon and striking fellow pool members with its shrapnel, its days would be over and I would be banned from the pool for life. It wouldn’t do that to me. So, like the good and loyal friend it is, my suit relents. So much, in fact, that what was once black is now a dark gray and growing lighter in hue each year, to the point where it will soon be transparent. Maybe then I’ll get a new suit.

I am filled with self-pity this July because this year was going to be different - a promise I make to myself every year, now that I think of it. Each January I proudly march through the bathing suit sections of my favorite department stores, imagining myself wearing this tankini or that bikini, looking like I stepped right out of the pages of Sports Illustrated, Swimsuit Edition. As a matter of fact, I envision getting the call – this year, for the first time, they’ve decided to feature a 40something woman on the cover because, after all, I look too good not to be proudly displayed on newsstands the world over, sporting the hottest hot pink bikini with my badass belly button sun tattoo and piercing.

Fully believing this fantasy is achievable, I hop on the Diet And Exercise Express every January 1. Okay, make that January 4 because it usually takes me that long to eat up all the holiday cookies and treats. Between January 4 and March whatever, I’m full of gung ho as I run, sweat, lift and generally make myself a permanent fixture at the gym. Everyone knows me by name and nobody dares to take my self-proclaimed locker. I even start coaching other slugs in how to suck in their bellies and make it all the way around the track without having to stop for a cappuccino and a bagel in the gym's café. And I do it with an abundance of excitement and glee – after all, the visual of me on the SISE is the best revenge I could  hope to exact on ex-boyfriends who believed they were trading up when they ditched me. We’ll conveniently forget that they ditched me for actual swimsuit model types - after all, what’s past is past.

But then, in March, it all goes terribly wrong. This ironically coincides with the convenient and strategic appearance of double coconut eggs at Wawa’s registers. They really couldn’t have perfected their marketing strategy any better than if the clerk himself popped one in my mouth every morning as I grabbed my coffee. It is in March when I usually realize that despite all my best efforts the scale hasn’t budged. Has. Not. Budged. And I protest by denouncing the gym and all its buff trainers, balancing balls and Bosu challenges as nothing but a batch of BS.

Sadly, this year was no different. And, like all years before it, denial takes over where determination left off.

Since June, I’ve been quite content to waddle around the pool in my tried-and-true black-turned-murky-gray skirted friend as I’ve done every year since my daughter’s birth - even if I do bear a striking (and somewhat horrifying) resemblance to Ursula from The Little Mermaid. But then one day as we were shopping for a suit for my nine year old, she commented upon how I wear the same suit year after year, saying that I never change. And she likes me like that.

“But wait!” my inner thin mommy-slash-goddess screamed. “I want to change!”

With horror, I realize there will come a day when my daughter will see me through preteen eyes, heaving myself up out of the surf after a boogie board ride, and realize that there is but a thinning film of Lycra between me and marine mammal rescue. And then she’ll be forced to pretend she doesn’t know me, and that will break my heart - more than would the shutting down of the Toll House division of Nestle.

I don’t want that. And besides - I’m not done yet! I’m forty five and have not lived half of my dreams! I want to be featured on the cover of a magazine, emerging from the surf looking fabulous as I’m unknowingly photographed. I want a belly button piercing that’s smaller than a tire rim. I want a sun tattoo that’s not drawn to scale. I want to turn heads, not stomachs, when I take off my cover up. I want to be the envy of all my fat, pasty friends (I have none to speak of, but will certainly get some in order to live out this fantasy).

So this year, armed with determination, fearlessness and a boatload of anti-depressants, I’m setting out to find me a new suit.
Before I went, I consulted You’re Kidding Me, Right? If you haven’t heard of it, this is Glamour and Cosmopolitan’s older sister magazine published specifically for the forty-ish crowd. Only in this publication, fashion advice has succumbed to sternly issued warnings designed to help its readers avoid being captured, detained and escorted to assisted living. Here is what the editors had to say about trying on a suit for the Fab Forty crowd:

1. Anything goes if you’re under twenty five and eat only cardboard. Bikinis the size of cocktail napkins are in, covering intimate body parts isn’t. Nor is wearing a napkin-sized bikini if you’re over forty, no matter how 20something you think you look.
2. “Real Women” beachwear has been designed for the vast majority of American women for whom wearing a bikini would be considered a felony - consisting of a one-piece suit with detachable skirt that, when removed, doubles as a beach cabana.
3. It is wise to avoid horizontal stripes, light colors or suits that have the word “Phat” printed anywhere on them. (Thanks, I wasn’t sure about that one.)
4. Fabric that promises to tone your tummy will only shift it to your neck, upper thighs, or both.
5. Darker colors that cover trouble spots are strongly urged.

After reading their hints, I decide that the most appropriate thing for me may be a full length wet suit. Unfortunately for me they don’t carry them in department stores, so I feared I would be reduced to trying on multi-colored cocktail napkins instead. That is perhaps one reason I put this off till July.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the Department of Doom was that only two sizes remained on the racks - size 2 and size 24. That was helpful, since I am neither. No doubt, a charging herd of real women had just come through and took all the normal sizes, I thought smugly, comforted in the fact that there is strength in numbers. As it turns out, I was in the toddler department - they had moved the ladies’ section to the third floor.

I took the stairs instead of the escalator, hoping that would shed at least 10 pounds. Once in the department I went immediately for the black suits, hoping the color itself would take another 20 pounds off my appearance. I noticed that many suits had “Slim Effect” tags on them, so I loaded up on those in virtually every style that came in black. I also decided to throw caution to the wind and try on one in brown. I tried to avoid the fat granny suits, since it was precisely that the kind of mold I was trying to break out of. I was feeling pretty good about this until I heard a 20something three racks over loudly protest that “the only thing this dumb store carries are fat granny suits”. I paid no mind, since I am about a cookie and a half away from being a fat-granny-suit model myself. I took comfort in the knowledge that someday she too will be forty.

Once in the dressing room, I took off my clothes and noticed that the mirrors showed everything. I mean everything. I could swear I now had two more belly rolls than when I left the house. I wondered why department stores couldn’t install those slimming mirrors found in fun houses – hey, I’m always up for some disillusionment when it comes to how I look. Talk about positive marketing, they wouldn’t be able to keep suits from flying off the racks.

The first one I tried was a turquoise “Slim Effect” one piece. I struggled for about 15 minutes to get it up over my hips and around my chest. Once on, I discovered two things: 1. I would have to give cautious consideration between wearing this suit and breathing, and 2. it gathered so tightly around my middle, it cut me in half and made me look like a deranged balloon animal. It also had the pleasant side effect of causing my stomach to divide and bulge out where my neck and thighs were. This absolutely would not do. Next!

The next suit was a two piece. Before you shut down your computer and run screaming from the room, take solace in the fact that that the two pieces were roughly the size of a market umbrella. And that’s exactly what I looked like when I put it on.

The third suit caught my breath (in a good way) when I put it on. It held every thing in place, it toned, tamed and bitch-slapped the hell out of all my fat modules, gave me an actual waist and the feeling I could take on any bikini-clad 20something and win. I was about to start crying with joy, the song “At Last” beginning to play in my head - that is, until I turned to the side. Apparently there is a rule in physics that for every action, there is a reaction. And the chosen reaction of my fat cells when compressed and forced together was to escape out of the back of my suit, causing me to look like a buffalo in a tutu.

Nexxxxxt!!!!!!

Number four squished my boobs and stomach together as if I had stuffed a keg down my suit. Number five was the color of baby poop. Number six made me look like a Zeppelin. Oh, the humanity!

Number seven was….well, now…a younger version of my old black skirted friend, but with a modern twist. It was a tankini with a small (not flouncy) wrap-around skirt that actually minimized, not accentuated my derriere. It covered not just one but both of my boobies, completely, and added definition against my flattened stomach (I won't go so far as to say flat, mind you, but during midnight swims who would be able to tell). I turned - no back overhang. I bent over – no circulation disruption. I moved cautiously around the dressing room – no bursting, ricocheting Lycra.

“At last,” I sighed, relieved. “My suit has come along.”

On my way home, I confidently plugged the number of the Sports Illustrated editor into my cell phone contact list. After all, I wouldn’t want to miss his call.