Face and time

March 2023

You may recall, many years ago now, I had a bathing suit my husband named “Big Blue.” My kids joke about this bathing suit to this day and nothing has quite replaced the suit in the bright blue hue. “Big Blue” was so well fitted and so structurally engineered that it had its own drawer. It also travelled in a carefully guarded suitcase so not to crush the most important parts. My children, who were relatively young then, still ask if I have it. Beyond the fact that I wonder why this is something that is so driven into their childhood memory, I laugh because “Big Blue” not only went out to pasture years ago, I find it funny that they think it would still fit.

Long since I have had a goal of replacing “Blue” with something equally memorable. Over the years I have dallied with orange, shocking pink, blue vertical stripes, black, grey and lately the pattern of flowers and palm trees. (They say that patterns act like camouflage. I am still not too sure about that.)

While in Florida this past year, for what many would consider an extended stay, I looked for the perfect suit. I don’t know why I was so naïve to think that in the dead of winter (for them too) there would be bathing suits everywhere. Not so. In fact, department stores were full of puffy jackets, wool hats and warm vests.

I wondered when would a Floridian ever wear these clothes? I am certain they were wondering what I was thinking dressed in shorts and a t shirt. It was not until I was making my way home did I see the potential of summer clothing, including bathing suits, make themselves into retail outlets.

The idea of “Big Blue”, and other fashion items, came to mind when I was with a group of girls while visiting in Clearwater. We were all discussing how we could look younger, or at least maintain what little youth we had left. As we were lamenting about our impending age, we ended up in uproarious laughter around our experiences with some of these “tools”. What came to mind was something we aptly named, face tape. Yes, face tape. This item is attached to the face and pulled to the hairline to give a smoother, less wrinkled, appearance. It is hidden by hair that is so carefully put into place and probably lacquered down with copious amounts of hair spray. We called it the cheap facelift and wondered how long the adhesive would last and if there would be any permanent damage to the skin. Deep down I was thinking maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.

We talked about Botox, shapewear, and laser. And although I found it kind of interesting that, as women, we were worried about this, our husbands were out on the balcony wondering what was so funny. And then it hit me, you see these women, and I hope I can count myself among this group, were so self aware and comfortable that we could joke about the aging process. The revelation was that we really would do these things, not for those others in our lives, but just for ourselves. That between dying our hair, doing our nails and other procedures just too intimate to mention, we cared that what we looked like was a reflection of who we really were; fun loving, life living babes who could laugh at the extent we would go to so the mirror is a true reflection of how we really feel.

So yes, Big Blue is in the past and I am on the hunt for the replacement. Something that will cinch and flatten in the right places and be comfortable at the same time. There are a lot of options out there now and many are like light armour with more bones than a human skeleton. I would worry about being in a pool during a lightening storm. The other option is to forget it all
and go more natural with something akin to a Speedo. Uh, I don’t think anyone wants to see that, including me.

Happy Spring everyone.

Sue Prodaniuk is a marketing, advertising and communications consultant. She can be reached at sprodaniuk@shaw.ca.

Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by WeebPal.