Heat and Humility

Today in Minnesota it cracked 90 degrees for the first time since last summer. Thankfully the full onslaught of humidity hasn't hit, otherwise I would be melting into a puddle to be mopped up and never seen again. When I got home from work all I wanted to do was put on a pair of shorts, t-shirt, and my sandals. I suppose if you think about it a certain way this clothes shedding could be considered 'Minnesota Molting.'

Now I am neither a geezer nor a prude, but I witnessed an early molting this April when our family went to one of the mid-Wisconsin over zealous indoor water park tourist traps. When did swimsuit companies start buying material by the square inch instead of the square yard? Most of these strips of cloth should come with a consumer warning label. When you watch news magazine shows that do makeovers or What Not to Wear they almost always extoll the virtues of dressing to your body type. Is swimwear exempt from this admonition? Maybe the warning label should read 'did you actually LOOK at yourself in the mirror?' or 'prepare to be leered and ogled (and not in a good way).' Trust me when I say that NOBODY wants to see me in a late 70's retro speedo, what makes you think I want to see you in it? There are very few people on this planet that can pull off the SI Swimsuit or retro speedo, and most of those are already in the magazines. For the rest of us, we need to be a little more prudent in our choices.

Wearing a swimsuit is not a crime, nor should it be. Neither do I follow Islam and expect women to be completely covered (except maybe my beautiful young adolescent daughter). What I wish is the term 'socially acceptable' to be defined a little more narrowly, for people to look in the mirror and think "that's not o.k." Victoria has no secrets...she has revealed them all. What I wish is people would leave a little for the imagination.