bathing suitThere's a developing news story I think we need to keep our eye on. Women are being tortured in tiny, florescent lit rooms everywhere from Kansas to Paris to Buenos Aires. They're being forced to squeeze into skin tight body suits, observe themselves in a mirror, then decide whether or not to fork over about 100 bucks for the displeasure of leaving the torture chamber with a handful of spandex. It's likely you too have experienced some of this pervasive persecution; it is, after all, bathing suit season.

According to a new study, women feel the absolute worst about themselves when trying on swimsuits in a dressing room. Once we get to the beach or the pool, our moods turn around. But put us in front of a full-length looking glass under a buzzing haze of terrible lighting and, good god, our self esteem plummets.

I think most of us can agree that bathing suit shopping is a pretty miserable experience. I hate it for so many reasons, not the least of which are those gauzy liners that people stick to the dressing room walls, the fact that wearing underwear underneath the suit makes my vaginal area look so inflated that it could take off at any moment, and the tags, my god, the tags. What is with those things? I can't try on a suit without at least 10,000 paper cuts.

And then there's the fact that I'm staring at my body's winter-long storage of cheese, whiskey, and more cheese in a mirror of harsh reality.

But whatdya gonna do. Unless you live in the North Pole, trying on swimwear is a fact of life. It's not necessarily a fact of every summer, but once in a while, you gotta put on a brave face, lock yourself in a white room, and wriggle around 'til your Boursin and bourbon belly is sufficiently stuffed into something halfway decent. Then hit the beach. Research says you'll feel better there. No shirt, no mirrors, no problem.

On a scale of 1 to 10 -- 10 being you'd rather light yourself on fire than go bathing suit shopping -- where do you fall?

 

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