Before you get excited about the title, know that this is still a PG-rated place. No nudity here, unless you let it pop into your mind, and I strongly suggest you don't.
My family is at the neighborhood pool. I am not. There are several reasons for this, which I suppose you could call excuses, but I'll share them with you.
One: It is hot out there. It is not in here. I love the outdoors, but I have perspired enough in the past 24 hours to last a decade. Fifth grade celebration (which is not a graduation, but by golly it felt like one after two hours in the seriously under-cooled theater) and the extended recess yesterday afternoon had me fanning myself so much yesterday I should have sore triceps today. (I love that as I was pushing the last little bits of paper before it started that my little people knew instinctively that I could not fan myself with the laminated Uncle Sam poster while gluing a script to construction paper, and three of them leaped into action, creating my own personal fan system. God bless them for knowing their old woman teacher.) All of that to say, I am paying for this air conditioning and I do not mind one bit being in it.
Two: Swimsuits are bad, bad, bad news for women who do not have perfect bodies. Guys, I promise, not one of us is judging your middle-aged white bellies or your hairy backs or your scrawny bird chests. We are too busy worrying about who can tell how much skin we have that our swimsuits won't contain, or how European we look despite our best hair-removal efforts, or the number of jiggles-per-step our thighs now make. Really. It is almost hard to have fun knowing that you feel like a marine mammal pretending to be human. It is especially hard when you haven't always had a waistline bigger than your hips or bust. Combined. I tried to put on a suit to go join my family. I couldn't get my biggest one-piece on, and the tankini that fits actually makes me look bigger than I do naked. This can not be the phenomenon the manufacturer expected for me.
Three: I like being here by myself. I like napping. I like (well, don't get annoyed by) doing laundry and tidying up when I am home alone. I can clip my hair out of my face and take off my more uncomfortable garments when I am at home on a Saturday afternoon and love knowing that I do not have to go anywhere all day. Heck, I can soak in the tub and pretend it's a pool - and not have to worry about how I look (see "Two" above).
So, I guess I am saying it is summer and I would rather be naked. Is that so wrong?
2 comments:
In some ways our society is so messed up. I remember when I was younger and had no self-consciousness about my body. Most of my life really. Then last year I had cancer surgery. They had to do a large excision and a lymph node removal. Doesn't sound so bad, right? They got it all. No worries there.
Sadly though, the site was right next to my nip. (Hey, I am a guy so this is still PG). It was a bad sewing job. So, not only am I the overly hairy guy you described, but I've had a botched boob job. But of course I can't take my shirt off outside now because of the sun. That works out.
It is a good thing that we know our worth is not dependent on how we look with little clothes on.
You are funny.
No, it is not so wrong. It drives me nuts to sit around any sort of body of water with my sister who goes crazy about how she (and every other female around her) looks in their bathing suit. It's like war with a side of self-loathing.
I really wish that we could reconceptuallize what beauty is in our culture. When we stop looking to compare expressions of self to a standard and start looking for the self that has been expressed, I think that's when we realize that beauty just is. Hmmm...comparing people to standards seems to cause problems in lots of places doesn't it?
It is also not wrong to not want to go to the pool with the fam just because you don't. Enjoy your summer, in whatever way works. And if you ever do want to do something outside, come kayak with me. You can wear shorts and a tshirt for that. No stress.
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