WHY Swimsuit, WHY!?

This weekend we're on our way to Sunyeudo with a bunch of our teaching homeboys and girls for some fun beach oriented times. The BEST part of this foray is the fact that one of the Korean teachers has MAD negotiating skills and has not only talked one of the bus drivers from our school into driving us to the ferry to get there for a mere fraction of the cost for all 16 of us to take the "normal" bus, but has also managed to procure us a place to stay in spite of the fact that all of the motels on the island have been booked solid for weeks! Even better? This place she's gotten us to stay is the home of one of the hotel/motel owners Ajuma (Grandmother) who will be away for the weekend! This trip contains a serious bulk of Sarah's favourite things! Throw in a pug dog and some pesto and they'll pretty much have to drag me off this island kicking and screaming.

Okay, so one problem here folks: swimsuits are EVIL. In preparation for this magical journey I felt the need to try on the two "beach suits" (as opposed to "pool suits" which are designed specifically for laps and not meant for lounging about in oceans...or pools for that matter...and should therefore not be worn unless one intends to be doing laps/lengths or some other format of water based exercise including but not limited to "aqua aerobics" or "water jogging"...all of which I suppose could be done in an ocean, sea or lake with a small degree of increased difficulty but you kind of get the point...right?) I'd brought along for purposes just like this and we got into a bit of a conflict.

Now, as a far-too-fat-type woman I've always been quite the fan of one piece suits and the occasional tankini...at least since they came into fashion in my mid-teens. In spite of my body positive attitude, though I do own one, I really can't bring myself to wear a belly-baring bikini outside of the house. Sure it would be mighty controversial and probably turn some heads, but after years and years of negative reinforcement about my "unsightly" mid-section, I've kind of internalized the idea that the world just doesn't want to see my bellyful belly and have ensured that my "beach suits" have a fairly large area of coverage...this, my friends, is where the conflict arises.

I have yet to figure out how to turn on the air conditioner in our apartment (in spite of our neighbour's kind help) and am therefore roasting alive in the 27 degree humidity pool that is today (*cries pitifully*...it is seriously too hot to MOVE! It feels like I'm swimming in hot...hence "humidity pool")Sitting about in all of this heat really got me to thinking about the joyous swims I plan to have this weekend and so I decided it was time for annual swimsuit try on time. Now, as far as I know, many women strongly dislike shopping for a new swimsuit. I'm not extremely opposed to it personally, at least not as opposed as I am to trying on the swimsuits that one already owns. At least when you don't like the swimsuit you've got draped over you in the change room, you can just stroll past, hand it to an attendant and say firmly "rejected". When the suits already belong to you, however, no such luck! Especially when you find yourself in the SK where it's unlikely that a large, lovely lady like myself will find anything big enough in the swimwear department to fit over even one of my voluptuous thighs! I likely should have done the yearly try on before I left home, but as previously mentioned, I was a bit swamped for time what with all of my worldly goods strewn across my (highly accommodating) grandparents' living room and only so many hours to get them squared away into too few pieces of baggage. Sure I could have taken the time to weigh my options while I packed, but that's just not what happened. Which is why today I found myself standing in front of our bathroom mirror (no, we didn't even have a full length for this dubious task, which basically meant that in order to check out the proportions of my bare thighs, I had to stand precariously on one leg, half-way out the bathroom door. Great.) trying desperately to make my cleavage a little bit less cleavagey in a desperate attempt not to offend in a country that is far more concerned with decorum and modesty than my (rather permissive) own. (BAH! I can't help it that I'm too voluptuous over here people! Believe me, especially when it comes to far too cleavage-y cleavage, keeping it under wraps is definitely one of those situations where I would if I could...but I can't!)

After wiggling around, readjusting and ensuring all of the important jiggly bits remained fully and entirely covered, half an hour, one cleavage-tastic one piece and a tankini later, I was just about ready to collapse from heat exhaustion!

Ladies, this trying on of swimsuits is truly a trial...am I right? I mean mens swimsuits (at least outside of Europe...) are all non-spandexy and non-form fitting. In fact, for the most part they're just pretty comfortable pairs of shorts with a built in net to keep your jiggly bits all comfy and stuff. You just kind of put them on and off you go. There might be a little netting related chaffing, but your flesh is certainly not going to come tumbling out of those bad boys by surprise...at least not if you stay away from anyone with a penchant for pantsing. There's very little wigglying involved in getting in our out of trunks, at least not last time I tried some on. As far as I remember, the hardest part was making sure that both of my feet made it through the netting underpants and out the legs without me falling to the ground in my typically clumsy way. They were comfortable, I didn't have to worry about post-swim, tacky thigh skin chaffing and there was no awkward attempt at getting them to cover my chest required (although, just think about it...wouldn't that have been funny?) With women's suits, you just can't win! Even if the world sanctions your wearing of a bikini, you've still got to make sure that you're all trimmed up "down bellow" AND that the girls don't go on a wild adventure, either full on escaping or engaging in some unwanted exhibitionism. And then when you have to squiggle out of those tacky mo-fos while post-swim wet? Well forget about it! I always end up narrowly missing the sink with my head.

I've had it with this insanity. Seriously, lets all put a stop to all of this immediately and just swim naked! Come on everyone...are you with me? I guess I'm just going to have to deal with it while I'm in South Korea though...otherwise I'm pretty sure I'll get deported.