“Are you going to go swimming tonight, Mama?” he says in that little-boy voice. It’s the 5-year-old, who likes to play with her hair. Who loves to snuggle. Who thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
All that doesn’t matter. She’ll still say no.
“Not tonight, baby,” she’ll say. Because she didn’t shave her legs or her bathing suit doesn’t fit yet (maybe it never will) or she’s just too tired today to deal with the emotional effort of trying to put on a swimsuit.
Because it takes great emotional effort to squeeze into that piece of spandex she keeps in her closet, where she can’t see it.
Those secret excuses—I’m just not ready to see what I look like, I’ll wait until I have a chance to lose more weight, no one wants to see this—go unsaid.
It’s okay, she tells herself. I’m still watching, so it’s not like they’re missing me. It’s still family time. I’m still present and fully engaged. I’m still there in the way it matters.
Every time she reads one of those articles urging women to just put on a swimsuit and get in the pool, this is what she tells herself.
Because, you see, it’s not as simple as just putting on a swimsuit and getting in a pool.
She’s had babies, and with every one of them, she added new marks, the ones that are almost invisible, almost unnoticeable, until they see daylight and start shining like they’re proud of their jagged lines, and people don’t need to see that. People don’t need to see the jiggly stomach she still carries five months, five years, fifteen years later. People don’t need to see those blue veins on the back of her knee.
God, she hates swimsuit season.
She does a pretty good job of hiding that disappointing body on a regular basis, with baggy shirts and hold-it-in undershirts and those workout pants that actually make her butt look a little bit good maybe.
Swimsuits are nothing of the sort. There is nowhere she can hide.
Children don’t understand these things, of course. They need other excuses—like she just doesn’t feel like it or she’s tired or she’d rather watch them having fun than join it. (Well, maybe not the last one. It’s too close to the truth.)
Her boys don’t care about the way she looks. They don’t care what other people think. They don’t care what she thinks, even.
Neither should she.
She knows this.
It’s just that it’s easier said than done, that putting on a swimsuit and getting in a pool. See, she is recovering from years of eating disorders, years of body dysmorphia, years of I-just-want-to-be-perfect-but-can’t.
It’s been years, a decade, more, but she is still recovering. She will always be recovering. This is her reality. No matter what they tell her, no matter what those body-empowerment proponents say, she still cares about having an attractive body, and she still cares about swimsuits showing the world that she doesn’t (at least not from her perspective).
Every year after babies were born, she slipped back into that perfection mode—gotta lose it fast, gotta get “it” back in record time, gotta somehow fit back into that spandex suit well before summer rolls around, even if the baby came in May.
Every year she could feel those old ghosts creeping in, telling her not to eat, telling her to stick a finger down her throat, telling her to reach for the laxatives. Just do it. It’s easy. You’ll be thin in no time at all. Remember?
She fought hard, too. She pressed through, every day, every hour, every second. She made it, sort of. Her hair was a little tangled and her clothes a little torn and she still walks with a limp she’ll try to hide.
But it’s not a once-healed, always-healed kind of thing. This is her body. This is her eyes. This is her criticism of something that would be beautiful on someone else.
Trying to stay in a constant state of body-appreciation instead of body-despising is really hard work for women like her. And there is no easy way out of this body-conscious state irritated by summers at the pool. There is only through.
She will have to go through.
She’s managed to avoid it, until now. But now they’re asking, every day, and she knows. She knows how this will go.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who can look their best at all…
After children
in a swimsuit
walking in broad daylight?
What all those “outsiders,” the ones who have never fought through anorexia or bulimia or dysmorphia, don’t understand that it’s not so much what other people think as what she thinks of herself, how she feels about that body wrapped up in a too-tight suit.
What does she think?
Well, she tries not to think about that.
So she makes her excuses for as long as she can. She stays out of the pool. She watches.
Her boys just keep asking (and thank God they do, because she can’t use those excuses indefinitely. They’ll never let her.).
And then, one day, her husband whispers in her ear, I think you’re beautiful. Just wear it for me. Just get in the pool and play with your boys.
And she thinks maybe, maybe, maybe she can.
Maybe she can.
She doesn’t look, can’t look, in the mirror, so she doesn’t know exactly what she looks like. These steps have to start small. This is how it must be for now. She’ll leave without looking, but that doesn’t mean she’s lost this war. Because she GOES.
She goes. She leaps. She soaks up the joy of those precious boys, who are just so excited that their mama is finally, finally, finally in the pool with them. Finally.
And Isn’t she beautiful? their eyes say.
Isn’t she beautiful?
And another day, another more courageous day, when she has the strength to look in that mirror and still go, she will see it, too.
Yes. She sure is beautiful.
