Two Queasy Pieces
Perhaps you have heard it’s bikini season. Perhaps you are wearing a bikini at this very moment. Do you possess the physical capability to put one on? If yes, then you have a bikini body. It’s not all that different from the sweatpants-and-cardigan body or even the foundation-garments body. Indeed, it bears a more than passing resemblance to the winter, spring, and fall bodies. The bikini body’s only real difference is that it’s much, much easier to build things around it, namely headlines, photo galleries, dieting advice, juice cleanses, websites, page clicks, “simple at-home workouts,” and an international industrial insecurity complex.
The Hindustan Times wants you to “get that hot bikini body.” The newspaper cares! Because it very much hopes you can avoid the one scenario all women fear even more than nuclear war, stage-four breast cancer, and a Michele Bachmann presidency combined. You know the one: “With just about a few weeks left to hit the beach, your worst nightmare has come true in [the] form of an unwelcomed [sic] bulge in your abs, big enough to spoil your entire bikini look!”
But there is hope. By addressing “the main problem areas” and adding “two kiwi fruits a day to your diet, as they are an excellent fat burner,” you may avoid this lengthy sojourn in hell.
E! Online is also very concerned for you; the site knows that you want to look like Kate Beckinsale, that lady from the Underworld franchise who recently “looked positively perfect in a white-hot bandeau bikini” while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas. Fortunately, this look can be achieved with daily yoga workouts, a highly paid trainer, and a “super clean diet of plenty of veggies and chicken” — but you must avoid caffeine, processed grains and sugar. Chicken: super-clean!
Has your baby bump recently graduated from fetus to actual infant? There’s hope for you, too. A website called Bikini Body Mommy welcomes you to “Join a Movement. Become an After.” Started by a “Mommy of THREE” (the caps are hers) who lost “100 POUNDS” (again, emphasis hers), it offers advice covering the usual suspects: diet, beauty, exercise. The “movement,” is in the direction of weight loss, with the promise of a two-piece bathing suit dangled like a carrot on a stick; as a March 7 blog post helpfully points out, “There are just 90 Days left between now and BIKINI SEASON!” The clock is ticking down to your inevitable, flabby failure. Unless, of course, you find salvation in abs work and salad.
Curiously, there’s no real equivalent of the bikini body for men. The closest may be the Speedo body; buried in wikiHow is advice on the matter. Attaining a Speedo body is a simple five-step process:
- Make sure the Speedo fits
- Eat well and exercise
- Get a tan
- Be confident
- Enjoy yourself
That’s it.
There is no guilt, no hand wringing, no admonishment; this is more of a pep talk from a kindly high-school guidance counselor. “Remember to always be safe while exercising!” the post warns. “A broken leg or arm will not help you look good in a Speedo.” “If you act perfectly at ease in a Speedo, most people will assume that you feel great in anything and won’t give you any trouble as a result.” Own those man mammaries; flaunt that shoulder pelt. “This will prove to the world that you’re confident about your sense of style, and that no one has a right to criticize it.” Carpe Speedum, brother!
It’s an astonishing document, one that neatly encapsulates the major difference between sartorial advice given to men versus that given to women: While men are rewarded for their confidence, women are frequently undermined for it.
Perhaps that’s because men lack bumps — namely, those that yield cleavage, and the ones that produce children. Women are routinely reduced to our bumps, so it’s probably little coincidence that the two most loathsome descriptors coined by the media in service of commodifying and fetishizing our figures are the “bikini body” and its close cousin, the “baby bump,” a term that effectively transforms the creation of another human being into a slowly gestating accessory.
The obsession with bumps has reached the point where flipping through a copy of Us Weekly is like watching The Human Centipede; it’s an endless, self-perpetuating cycle from bikini body to baby bump to bikini body and back again. Everyone loves a baby bump, until it becomes postpartum flab that needs to be blasted away with a bikini body workout and a Jenny Craig/Weight Watchers/batshit-crazy fad diet.
I’d like to think we’ve reached or are close to reaching a saturation point with both terms, and that they’ll soon start to rot away like gangrenous vestigial limbs. But since that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, my suggestion in the meantime is to forget working towards a bikini body. Instead, start chiseling away at a go-fuck-yourself body. It’s a year-round endeavor, yes, but one that’s entirely worthwhile.
