Following up on my post about swim shorts, I wore my new suit to work. I haven’t tried swimming in it. Already, I have discovered some good and bad things about my two-piece bathing suit.
The disadvantages are well-known but some to the advantages are new to me. My goal is to learn to ignore the disadvantages (aka get over my own body image hangups), and learn to embrace the advantages. I may need to buy more suits to help with my continuing quest for excellent swim gear.
Advantages:
- It is possible to buy tops and bottoms in the size you need. This is probably self-evident to most people, but I only figured it out when my most recent suit arrived and I realized I might have gotten away with a bottom that is one size smaller;
- I can mix and match suits, at least in theory. My matchy matchy brain is still trying to wrap my brain around that one, but I admire people like my daughter, who does it all the time.;
- When I’m lifeguarding, I don’t need to strip out of my lifeguard pinny and take off a one-piece to go to the bathroom;
- If I forget my underwear, I can wear the top as a sports bra. Going commando to go home is usually just fine, but I hate going out in public without some sort of breast support.
Disadvantages:
- That “sports bra” is wet. I often do errands on the way home so my shirt ends up wet. If I go straight home, then I have to take off a wet sports bra. Wet sports bra removal should be an Olympic sport;
- I have yet to find a bathing suit top that doesn’t give me uniboob. Every promising one I have looked at so far has an underwire and that’s a hard no for me. I don’t mind being squashed while in the water because it helps me be streamlined. But it’s hot and sweaty out of the water;
- If the top doesn’t give me underboob it’s because it has ruffles, ruching, bow tie, baggy matching bottoms, or some other thing that adds drag when I’m trying to swim.
- I’m still coming to terms with exposing my less-than-perfect belly.
I still dream of finding a great two-piece training suit that fits my slightly-larger-than average body but I’m beginning to think it’s a unicorn. In fact, it’s so rare I couldn’t find a good image of a unicorn wearing a bathing suit so you will need to settle for this unicorn on a bathing suit.
