I can't remember the last time I wore a bikini and to be quite honest, I don't know if the day will ever come that I dare parade around the neighbourhood pool in basically a brassiere and underwear. At the risk of sounding old fashioned, somewhere over the past five years, my penchant for collecting bikinis in every colour and style imaginable has waned. Perhaps it's because the once girlish silhouette with the tapered waist and enviable abdominal region has waned. Time can be a friend to wine but a foe to the core of women over 40, and although I swore I would never become one of those women who blamed age on the changing physique, lately I hear myself doing just that.
Years of high-impact, low-impact, spandex-induced aerobic classes transformed my sluggish, never took phys-ed in high school body into a tight, toned physique. This level of firmness and fitness lasted well into the thirties, well past the births of three children, and then, it happened. The fourth decade arrived and with it, a barrage of excuses to stop attending the very classes that helped me achieve my fitness goals. It seemed as though napping, playing with the cats, reading, taking long walks, gardening, biking, baking, and just enjoying those precious moments of solitutude in-between driving around teenagers, took precedence over huffing, puffing, spandex and sweating.
Today, what is left of the bikini collection sits in a lonely bottom drawer in the walk-in closet, and although I recently joined a local gym in the hopes of tightening and toning the body parts that have started to geographically head south, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I will ever venture out of the closet wearing a bikini. Perhaps it is high time I arrived at this mature decision. Perhaps a woman in her fourth decade has no business wearing a bikini, unless on a secluded far off beach with her mate. Afterall, a bikini really and truly is a brassiere and underwear only in different fabrics and patterns. Then what is all the fuss about wearing a bikini anyway? Perhaps I don't want to talk to my neighbours, co-workers, or townsfolk in my brassiere and underwear. Perhaps with age comes wisdom. Perhaps a woman in her fourth decade finally accepts her body as it is - be it bikini-ready or not. Afterall, aren't the forties the new twenties only with wisdom, experience, self-confidence, and the freedom from bikinis. How refreshing!
