My friends and I who have kids frequently discuss how attractive our bodies used to be and how terrible swimsuit season makes us feel. We buy suits to cover up, well, as much as we can to hide our body. We believe the 20 year olds are the sexiest at the pool and we recede into the background. We convince ourselves that we are no longer attractive and don’t deserve two-piece swimsuits and string bikinis.
We blame spreading hips, sagging boobs, and the inevitable pull of gravity. We sit around and lament about how things don’t stay in place anymore and how terrible our bodies look after sacrificing them to the demanding goddess that is pregnancy.
But that’s not the truth.
I spend a lot of time a community pools. It is an interesting social experiment, to say the least.
Lately, while at the pool, sipping quietly on my Miami Vice (a strawberry daiquiri/pina colada blend for those of us who can’t make decisions), decidedly ignoring my novel, I watched. I watched all the people.
Some of the women I watched exuded sex, absolutely and in all ways. Men oogled them, bartenders made them free shots, other women avoided being near them, and even I couldn’t help but be mesmerized.
I started to sit with my stomach sucked in all the time (exhausting, and hard to enjoy your drink while doing this) and I found myself brushing my hair every 30 minutes (at the pool).
But here’s what I realized: these sexy women weren’t the youngest and they weren’t the ones with the skinniest bodies or most glistening hair.
In fact, it was quite the opposite. These sexy women were all curves and soft spots.
So what made them so sexy?
It wasn’t the swimsuit choice, the degree of tan, the sunglasses choice.
It was the simple fact that these women didn’t worry.
These women acted like they had not a care in the entire world. When you watched them you felt they had hours, days, to devote to doing whatever they wanted – and that just might be sex. They looked like they knew how to have fun. They seemed to promise that if they had hours to spend with you it would be relaxed, unhurried, and all about you.
They did not care about how they looked. They didn’t pick at their swimsuits, walk a certain way, or make sure they sat with their C-section scar hidden. In fact, you could see every imperfection they had. They just didn’t care.
The confidence, the time, the belief in their bodies…these were the women who took the honor of being the sexiest at the pool.
Moms! That’s not us!
We walk to pools as pack mules. We come in with enough snacks to feed an entire Scout troop, floaties, four bottles of sunscreen, and pool toys to stave off the ADHDÂ progeny.
We are not careless or unhurried. We simply don’t have the luxury to be. At the pool we are a constant, watching mass of lifeguard/Big Brother/mother all wrapped in to one Athleta-clad human being. We get in the middle of wrestling matches, lord over temper tantrums, and yell all while wearing very little clothing. We jump in when someone needs us, right away, without any thought for how inelegant and ungraceful our water entry (and exit) may be.
We have cares. We have thoughts. These things are part of our jobs as mothers. Those will never leave us.
Yet we also have cares that we self-create. We have cares that we carry with us that maybe we don’t have to. We pack mule our own insecurities, too.
Want to spot a mom at the pool? Find the tankini. Find the woman constantly fidgeting with her suit. Find the person who hides in the shadows under the umbrella, self-conscious, not commanding attention mid-pool while throwing a NERF football.
I am tired of hiding under the umbrella.
My body isn’t perfect. I know it isn’t and, as I have shared before, it is something I have spent hours, and probably a lifetime agonizing over.
But my body is as good as it is going to get. I do my share of fitness, I eat healthy enough. I also left 40 in the rearview mirror awhile ago, and I have two kids that came out of my belly who I breastfed. This is it, guys. Nothing is going to be lifted, get tighter, or look better without some form of invasive, expensive, unnecessary surgery.
And maybe it is time for us, for me, to be OK with that. Actually, maybe it is time to be more than OK with our bodies the way they are: it is time to be PROUD of them.
Moms, we know how to move, we know how to live. We know how to eat, cook, and watch a sunset with the right person. We know how to snuggle at night and grow the next generation. We are awesome, strong, and powerful.
And it is time we took back our rightful place as the sexiest ones at the pool.