'Swimwear' fashions drown
            self-esteem

Dave Barry
Of The Miami Herald


   Hey, it's summertime! Time for fun
'n' sun at the beach 'n' pool. And you
know what that means, guy 'n' gals!
   It means you're too big 'n' fat.
Especially you gals. I don't care if
you spent the entire winter doing leg
lifts and eating reduced-calorie celery;
I don't care if you recently underwent
liposuction with an industrial fire
hose; you're still nowhere NEAR ready
to put on modern, high-tech female
swimwear.
   I recently passed a store that had,
as its window display, what appeared to
be a small, red party balloon that had
popped, so there was just this sad
little shred hanging there. When I
looked at it closely, however, I
realized that it was actually a BATHING
SUIT, with cute little miniature straps
and everything, constructed by skilled
seamstresses peering through microscopes
and wearing surgical masks because
otherwise they might accidentally sniff
up and get thousands of dollars worth
of designer swimwear lodged in their
nasal passages.
   In other words, this suit looked as
though it could not be successfully worn
by any woman larger than Tinkerbell.
   Making women's hips appear to be
the size of the Appalachian foothills
has long been a major objective of the
talented designers at the International
Fashion Institute For Developing Women's
Swimwear That Women Should Not Wear.
   The way they achieved it was, they
eliminated most of the fabric on the
sides of the swimsuit, so that the
woman's hips appear to continue right
on up to her armpits. This is a look=
originally popularized by tyrannosaurus
rex, a fashion-conscious dinosaur that
decided to become extinct after it
caught a glimpse of itself in the
mirror.
   Lately the Swimwear Institute has
come up with an even more advanced
fashion concept, which is to remove all
the fabric from the lower rear swimsuit
area except or a strand approximately
the width of an electron.
   The resulting bathing suit appears
to be some kind of prank played by a
fun-loving swimwear salesperson ("Of
COURSE it has a back, Mrs. Johnson!"),
so that the victim is unaware that she
has transformed herself into the
International House of Buns. See you on
the beach, gals!
   Now let's talk about swimwear for you
guys. I personally prefer the modest
style known as "trunks," which is the
classic modified-Bermuda-shorts swimsuit
popular among mature glof-oriented men
with heart-surgery scars, the kind of
swimsuit with enough extra room
inside for you to carry your keys or
your wallet or, if you want, several
pieces of your furniture.
   But I notice that more and more guys,
even guys my own age, are going for the 
very brief "bikini" style of swimwear,
which looks fine on your average
everyday Olympic diving champion but
which, on a guy who is even slightly
out of shape, tends to look like a
small rubber band attempting to restrain
a large pork loin. This is not a
pleasant visual effect, guys.
   The irony here is that none of these
"swimwear" fashions is really suited for
the actual act of swimming. The ideal
fashion attire for that purpose is of
course to be naked as a jaybird. This
lends an air of adventure to the basic
swimming activity, which is otherwise,
if you ask me, pretty boring.
   For real naked swimming excitement,
I have also found that it helps to be
swimming in some body of water that you
are not, technically, supposed to be
swimming in, such as the Kensico
Reservior in Armonk, N.Y., where my
friends and I swam during our
childhoods. We'd swim at night, when the
water turned the same impenetrable color
as the lagoon in the movie "Creature
from the Black Lagoon." It was a
fantastic feeling.