Jackson Free Press

I haven't felt good in a bathing suit since I was 9 years old. Before then, I refused to remove one for two years. I even forced my mother to let me wear it underneath my clothing during the winter months. It was a one-piece red-and-white-striped bathing suit with a flouncy skirt, and it was beautiful. Lord, did it make me feel pretty. After several years of yelling and screaming and me fishing it out of the trash, my grandmother finally bribed it away from me with a Barbie doll.

She did this by trapping me in the bathtub, offering me bubbles and then casually asking if I wanted the new "Peaches and Cream" Barbie doll. It angered me that she could ask a question of this magnitude so casually. This was a question I deigned as moot, like whether I wanted chocolate ice cream for dinner or if I would mind it horribly if she allowed me to run around the house with scissors while the refrigerator door stood open. Of course, I wanted the new "Peaches and Cream" Barbie. She then just as casually asked if I would trade her that new "Peaches and Cream" Barbie for the hallowed bathing suit. It was then that I began to fully understand how wily and smart the women in our family truly are.

My grandmother was famous for bribing her grandchildren out of "safety items." I thank her mightily for this as I would probably still be trying to fit that red-and-white swimsuit over my left thigh if it wasn't for the Barbie bribe that shook it from my grasp.

I've yet to feel this way about a bathing suit again. Or rather, I've found some that I would wear in public, but none that quite replicated the pure feeling of beautiful dancing weightlessness of the red-and-white one. My mother actually kept the bathing suit. It sits packed in a plastic bag in a storage chest. I keep telling myself that the next time I weigh 42 pounds, I am going to unpack that sweet piece of Lycra and attend the nearest pool party.

As this summer gets started and the heat we breed around here like mosquitoes cranks up, I'm pretty sure that on July 4, I will be forced to wear some form of a bathing suit. After all, it would be in pretty bad taste to wear jeans and a T-shirt in the pool as I attempt to defend the champion title of "Queen Wrestler of the Greased Watermelon," which I won last year at the annual barbeque. Yes, I actually hang out with people who consider it entertaining to throw a greased watermelon into a pool and then see who can wrestle it from everyone else in order to be the first to hoist it—gleaming and beading water from its Vaseline procured shiny rind—onto the side of the deck. I know I will win this year if only because The Man and I are running greased watermelon "dry runs" in the backyard at least twice a week. But, I also know in order to retain this title, I must own a bathing suit.

Owning a bathing suit means I must suffer through the second most-hated injustice of this decade they innocently call "The 30s":bathing-suit shopping. (The first of these being the "30-year physical," which includes, um, indignities I won't go into here.) I did this shopping at a local discount store after a good dosing of anti-anxiety medication and a few self affirmations. After choosing three suits that seemed to "fit the bill," I retired to the dressing room to do an impromptu version of "wrestling with a greased watermelon" trying to get into the damn things. About 20 minutes and 14 loud cries of distress later, I thoroughly resigned myself to jumping into the pool in a T-shirt and jeans. I gave up the pursuit and headed to pick up some small items that I needed for the house.

As I walked down the aisle containing fake bronzers and sun block, I squeezed past a woman pushing a shopping cart carrying a 6-year-old boy. (I am "guess-timating" his age as I don't have children, and this particular specimen was neither wearing a diaper, nor driving his own car. That's about 6, right?) As I properly excused myself, sucked in, and fit between the cart and the other side of the aisle, he innocently looked up at me and said, "You're pretty!"

I blushed and said, "Thank you. You are sweet!" I was about to add a caveat to his mother about having his eyes checked when I realized that somewhere in this whole debate of swimming suits and measuring the exact size of my 30-year-old ass, I had forgotten the 9 year-old me. The 9 year-old me that felt absolutely beautiful in that old and faded swimsuit; the 9 year-old that felt as if she had no care in the world only when she was actually wearing the bathing suit—not the other way around. When I wore that suit, nothing was more important than being happy, being gay. It's a choice these days, though.

Then it all made sense. It immediately became clear that I gave up these carefree swim-suited days to own a peach-colored piece of plastic that would continue to haunt the entirety of American women and their feelings regarding their beautiful round asses.

I went to the toy department and bought the closest thing to a "Peaches and Cream" Barbie that I could find. After purchasing said doll, and still glowing confidently from the compliment concerning my beauty, I walked into the parking lot, tore open the box, ripped off the doll's head and hung it from the rearview mirror like a war prize.

If there is going to be a winner in this ongoing battle concerning America's problems affirming diverse female forms, I think the odds are better if the other side is doing it without a head. At then least I know I'm definitely smarter. I can only hope some wandering SUV ran over the bottom half of the Barbie as she lay on the concrete. I can think of no other iconic American image that deserves to suffer from problems related to boob-drooping and ass-flatness. I have bigger things to worry about.

After all, this weekend I have to wrestle a large greased watermelon from the hungry grasp of at least 10 other people. I'm going to need all the strength this big round ass has to offer.