Utterly Unsuitable: Choosing a Swimsuit for an Older Woman

by Julia Sneden

The week ahead
Holds lots of dread:
I have to buy a bathing suit.
I’d be a dope
To have much hope
Of finding fit (don’t mention cute).
In fact if my long search is fruitless
I may well have to dive in suitless.

It’s an annual chore for most people, this business of buying a bathing suit. For me, it comes around every six months or so. Actually, the one I’m wearing these days has lasted longer than most, but what was once a trim, simple, black suit is now a saggy, baggy brownish body drape covered with odd spots where the color has disappeared altogether, so that dapples of flesh (mine) show through. In a mud-and-sand camouflage contest, I’d be a winner. When other people at poolside start staring and snickering, it’s time for a change.

I don’t mind spending money on a suit if I can find one that I like. In fact, I usually buy two suits at a time, because I have a dread of needing a suit at the wrong time of year when there simply aren’t any in the stores. Besides, a good fit is rare. Alas, when I bought my current suit, it was the only one on the rack that fit me.

With older women and men all across the country doing water aerobics and swimming laps, wouldn’t you think the bathing suit manufacturers would twig to the idea that there’s a huge market out here? Not only do we seniors buy suits; we buy suits more often than even the teenagers do, because we’re harder on them. No clean surf ‘n sand for us, no lying still on a beach blanket for hours, or languidly standing around the lifeguard’s chair. No, we are up to our clavicles in health club pools full of chemicals, stretching our suits (and our bodies) to all sorts of outrageous extremes, sweating inside them even though the water is cool.

It’s a marketing maven’s  dream: virtually endless demand, a quick turnover, and not much need for endless re-styling.

Continue reading Julia Sneden’s classic, Utterly Unsuitable. http://www.seniorwomen.com/news/index.php/choosing-a-swimsuit-for-an-older-woman