Let’s Be Honest (Jordan) – The Definitive Guide to Your Best Beach Body

Ladies, ladies, ladies. If you’re reading this, it’s likely sometime in August and as usual, I have awkwardly timed my articles to catch you smack in the middle of the beach season as opposed to at the front of it. But never mind that, we are busy, modern-day women and we will submit to no timeline or weather pattern. Things happen in their own divine timing and maybe you’ve spent the first part of summer sweating your ass off under part-shade, watching everyone swim and insisting that you are fine and don’t want to go in. Girl, today we fix that. Today, we take back our power, our cellulite and the rest of this summer.

Casually avoiding the sweet relief and fun that swimming and summer activities bring is my MO most summers. I will sit on scorching patio furniture under an umbrella that allows part of my alabaster leg and face to be painfully torched, while calling out gleefully, “Oh, shucks, I forgot my bathing suit, but go ahead! I just love watching you guys swim!” I will down glass after glass of water just to keep from melting and watch the kids do dives and tricks instead of actually going in there with them. I didn’t have the foresight to just buy a home with a pool, so we are always at friends and neighbours for these events and unless I’ve known you forever, I am not getting into a bathing suit in front of you.

At least, that was how I used to be. Until I woke up this morning and thought, “F-word this. I am a modern-day woman, a feminist, an overall good person and I do not deserve to roast and swelter while everyone else gets to do handstands in the pool. I will not let the ridiculous, cruel and unfair body-shaming mentality ruin my summer. Not today, Satan.”

Sisters, here is my plan for our days of donning bathing suits so that we can swim with the children, swim alone, practice synchronized swimming routines with our pals (?) or just sunbake poolside:

1. Bring your bathing suit with you. No more “forgetting”. Trust me, even when you are sure you’re not going to be caught dead in it, at 35 degrees and an hour at the pool party, give yourself a fighting chance and the option to swim. Pack that suit.
2. Put it on. Go into the water. Remind yourself over and over and over that you are rejecting the commoditization of women’s bodies and that you deserve to be in a bathing suit because you’re a human on planet earth and your body need not internally roast when there is a body of water yonder or yore. Whisper this to yourself if needed.
3. Remember that probably no one cares about your bathing suit body and if they do, they are either likely projecting their own body woes, appreciating your time at the gym, or an asshole. None of these things need matter to you. They will matter less when you are submerged in refreshing water, enjoying the tiny nuggets of summer that we get as Canadians.
4. Practice, repeat and get back to me on this.

We got this. Summer 2019, I’m coming for you in a rouched-mummy-tummy friendly bathing suit and I will not be stopped.

May you be happy (and cool),