Stuffed Into A Swimsuit

An older body packed into a bathing suit is sometimes not a pretty sight.

At worst, it’s environmentally unfriendly, depending on the size of the suit and what it (fails) to cover. Personally, I am fine with the idea of “let it all hang out” if what’s hanging out is yours. What’s mine, not so much.

I am a competitive swimmer, so the swimsuit situation is a little different. We have tech suits that offer varying degrees of compression. Of course, if you compress body parts, the compressed bits have to go somewhere. Usually, it means they crowd other bits or hang outside the back or side of the suit.

Tech suits are cool and they make you swim faster. But they come at a cost to your wallet (running up to $800 or more) and sometimes your breathing. I have seen swimmers unable to breathe normally after a race while wearing one of these suits.

And then there’s the issue of your excess protruding from various points. While it may look to the rest of the non-swimming world that the suit is too tight, we just tell them the tech suit is supposed to fit that way; it should be a size smaller than skin. Then we turn around and walk away with a waddle in our step, inching the material ever so delicately out of our butt.

I spent this weekend in just such a suit, competing with other (mostly) aging swimmers. We had a good meet, although it was cold. Nobody got hurt, everyone complained that their times could have been better (par for the course at every meet) and we’re all looking forward to the next one. Beats a weekend spent on the couch watching the latest political news or corona virus update.