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07 August 2006

Beach Belly Bingo

First, I hope this blog thing goes well. I know, I know - maybe I should be more careful and let things shake out before always trying to be a trendsetter. But I'm a risk-taker at heart, and I'm betting dozens of people will soon be blogging. At least.

While most of my content ostensibly will be about my day-to-day teaching experiences, right now I'm trying to ignore the fact that school starts for me in less than two weeks. Plenty of time for that.

Instead, let's discuss a beach trip observation, as we just returned from vacation. Now, I try to be a good boy when out on the beach. It's a given that women in bathing suits will be all around, and that many of these bathing suits will be of the skimpy bikini variety. So, yeah, I notice things, though I try to leer only at my own wife. What was a little different this year was who was wearing the skimpy stuff, in addition to the usual 18-22 year-olds.

There were several families from a certain Midwest state all staying in our same apartment high-rise (we stay in ours as sponges on my in-laws). Don't know if they were all one big family, or just several groups of friends. Or maybe it was just Midwest week at Myrtle Beach. What I do know is that in this group there were a lot of wives/mothers, in their thirties, and in almost insanely good physical condition. They wore small bikinis each day. They had flat abs, and little discernible cellulite. At least one of them clearly had boob augmentations (after childbirth, I assume). All of them (even those without the flat abs) had belly rings and back tattoos and ankle bracelets. And you know, by day three or four, I found myself really annoyed with these people (and I believe they could have been from anywhere and I would have noticed the same things - nothing intrinsic about Midwesterners).

Why? I don't know - maybe because I'm wondering why already attractive women need all that stuff? Maybe because these women rarely did anything but stand around and glisten in their bikinis, as if needing to be seen? Maybe because I'm wondering why I rarely saw their husbands actually interacting with them?

Look, I'm sure they are wonderful folks. Their kids seemed happy and not neglected. I didn't detect any particular "desperate housewife" syndrome going on. It just seemed they were, and had been, trying too hard to be something that seems incongruous with being a thirty-something mom. And I'm perfectly willing to believe their husbands contribute to this in one way or another.

It could be I'm just annoyed because they are, ultimately, not the kind of women I could ever have gone for, for long. My wife, who is plenty hot even if she doesn't have perfect abs, would never wear bikinis like that in any case, nor would she go for the tats or rings that are supposed to say "sexy". And instead of trying to be noticed, she spent her beach time either playing with my son, riding waves with me on boogie boards, or switching off between the two, as opposed to just dipping a toe in the water every now and then. I'll take the vigorous beach wife anyday, thank you.

I had not thought belly rings had undone so many. - Dante

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As my old computer science teacher told me, lo! These many years ago: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.