Because I Hate Myself.

In a fit of feminine masochism, I decided that I need to buy a bathing suit. I haven’t owned one for seven of eight years. I grew up in Florida, but when I was 13, my family moved to Wisconsin, and I traded my bathing suit collection for a closet full of marshmallow coats and snow boots. On those few occasions I was able to swim, shorts and a t-shirt sufficed.

I live in North Carolina now, and I haven’t been swimming once unless you count squatting in a kiddie pool with my friend Maureen’s two-year-old. But I’ve still decided that a bathing suit is something I should have, if only to serve as a shameful reminder of every physical flaw I possess. I enjoy being a girl.

I’ve made a few trips to places like Target and Wal*Mart, but I haven’t made more than one trip into a dressing room, where, laden with bits of unnecessarily spangled spandex, I somehow managed to get stuck in a strappy bikini top. I came thisclose to shoplifting the thing underneath my shirt rather than admit to anyone that I needed help before I summoned my inner octopus and wriggled my way out with only a few bruises and one possibly dislocated shoulder. That wasn’t even the worst thing that happened in the dressing room. That honor goes to catching a glimpse of my own lycra-encased butt in the tri-fold mirror. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I have a feeling that there was an unfortunate mix-up at some point in my life and there’s a much older woman walking around ecstatic at having gotten away with my ass.

I figure enough of these experiences will successfully kill my desire to own a swimsuit, but I can’t help wondering what frivolous, humiliating thing will replace it? Will I thrill my friends with stories about bikini waxing to explain the sudden appearance of crutches under my armpits? Could I possibly become inexplicably devoted to four-inch heels and skirts tight enough to constrict blood flow to everything below my belly button?

All I really know is that being a girl can be awfully dumb sometimes. Now where’s my damn eyelash curler?