String bikini or modest swimsuit? It's all a matter of timing and perspective!

Way back, years ago while in college, my husband worked at a surf shop where he bought me a gift – a string bikini.

There isn’t much to a string bikini. Basically, it’s two tiny triangles joined by strings for a top, and two larger triangles joined by strings for a bottom. It’s the kind of thing a guy buys you while you’re dating and he’s anxious to see as much skin as possible (and twenty years later would glare with crazed eyes if the same woman decided to wear it beyond the backyard fence). Back then, the swimsuit made me grin. I was tickled to wear such a forbidden thing out of sight of my parents.

I thought of that old string bikini this week. The recent blast of warm weather brought beach trips to the forefront of plans, and in hopes of the high temperatures sticking around, I decided it was time I escaped to Charlotte to buy a new swimsuit.
As my daughters poked through the racks with me, searching for something “motherly,” they pulled out -- and shoved back in -- several modern variations of the string variety. “Oh, not THAT one,” they would say.
I hid my smirk time and again until I finally broke down laughing. “You don’t think your mother would ever wear one like that, eh?” I held my secret in check.

With arms full of “motherly” choices, we hit the dressing rooms. Swimsuit after swimsuit was tossed aside. Cut too high, too low, too loose, too tight.

Every woman knows the routine from toddler age onward. Most swimsuits cover less skin than underwear. All suits make thighs look fat. Trying on swimsuits in the spring before exposing skin to sunshine makes thighs look less appealing than slimy garden slugs served on lettuce for supper.

Color choices are extremely limited, and tend to fall into blazing red, fuchsia, black, and sea blue, or some horrible mixture of orange, yellow and florescent green that allows the swimsuit to double as a flare should your boat capsize at sea.

Eventually, after I quit moaning about my thighs, we found several “suitable” suits, not quite the ballooning variety of grandmas, and not the almost naked variety of my early string bikini, but satisfactorily in between.

On the long ride back, I kept thinking about that old string bikini. When we got home, I pulled it from its sacred hiding place, a memento of youth to never be thrown away, and told my girls the story behind it. They stared at it in wonder. After being dazed a moment, they grabbed it and began prancing around.

“Can I wear one like this when I’m a teenager?” asked my eldest daughter.

My husband laughed. “Sure. In your bedroom. With the curtains closed.”

Funny how the viewpoint changes.