Alison Bezzina

Love it or hate it, ready or not, it’s coming and it’s coming fast. Summer is just around the corner and soon enough there will be little need for wardrobe. Everybody will start stripping down to their unmentionables and parading in little more than their birthday suit.

 

Perhaps it’s because I am not particularly sensitive to the heat, but I just don’t understand why some of us cannot wait to hit the Sliema promenade without their shirt on. Don’t you know that no matter how many times you shower and scrub, a host of bacteria, yeast, fungi and other flora and fauna still call your body their home? Please let it be known that the summer heat is not an excuse for showing off cracks and crevices that are purposely meant to store heat and moisture for very crucial physiological reasons.

 

Thongs are wrong!

Even if you’re one of those people who drag their butts down to the gym five days a week, thongs are still wrong! Girls, if your delicate derrière is so jiggle-free that it can carry off a butt cracking slip, then you certainly don’t need to suffer the pains of complete pube deforestation in order to get noticed. If your butt is that good then you could be wearing a sack, which I’m quite certain will cause less abrasion and irritation and the same amount of attention that you so desire. And guys, if you think you can bounce a Euro off your rock hard cheeks, I’m prepared to bet anything, that in reality, you either have a typical male square butt, a hairy butt, a wobbly butt or a just plain ‘hide your butt’, so please do us all a favour and stick to the good old fashioned swimming trunks....no not Y fronts, trunks!

 

Hairy business!

Don’t even get me started about scraggy and patchy hairy chests, or even worse, unsightly bushy backs. All you guys need to know is that ‘things’ get stuck in hairs and that most women can’t even floss without gagging. So even if you have a face to take up painting for, take my advice and don’t show off your hairy bits. If you’re going to expose it then shave it, wax it, tweeze it, trim it, bleach it or cut it. Whatever you do don’t plat it or play with it and don’t expect anyone to oil it. There are spas and unisex beauty parlours sprouting everywhere. You have no excuse, just get it sorted.

 

The bikini!

The search for the perfect bikini starts right about now. For as long as I can remember dried up stick insects with small breasts were considered to be the perfect models for tiny tops and stringy bottoms. Because of this trend, bikinis got so small they could barely be seen by the naked eye. But now big breasts are back in and whilst you can make a hat out of a 34DD bikini cup, you can hardly cover an eyebrow with a size ten bottom! It’s amazing how we can send humans and dogs to the moon, connect with different continents at the touch of a button, and yet remain incapable of creating a bikini for the average woman whose upper body is not directly proportionate to her lower parts! Perhaps it’s because we’ve only had 62 years to sort this out -the bikini was invented in 1946. From all the shopping missions that I’m forced to take on during the year, I find this one the most exasperating. First of all, liking yourself in a bikini before you’ve actually waxed, tanned and toned is like trying to put extracted toothpaste back into its tub, but what’s even worse is that most bikinis are sold in sets of the same size. When you have a concave chest and an abundant bottom or an ample chest and a non existent behind, you have no choice but to buy two sets in order to mix and match the two parts you need. Not doing this will result into at least one part of your body bursting out of its relevant receptacle when you’re ‘aloofly’ heading for the pool in front of the object of your affection.

 

Haribos for toes

I don’t like my toes. My friends have dubbed them Haribos because they (my toes) don’t seem to have realised that they are attached to the feet of a thirty-something and instead have remained looking like those of a toddler – podgy, stout, fleshy, practically boneless and with no specific direction. But, if there’s one thing that I absolutely love about summer it’s running around with bare feet. I’ve always hated heels and shoes that make it their life’s mission to pinch at my poor Haribo toes, and over the years, I’ve also developed an absolute aversion to any type of closed shoe that deprives me from feeling the different surfaces under my callus-free feet. So come spring, I can hardly wait until it is warm enough to bare my pudginess to all and sundry. As soon as I come home from work, I knock off my shoes and delight in the pleasure of walking around as God intended. It creates a good boundary between home and work - when the shoes come off, my brain knows that the workday is over, it’s the weekend or I’m on holiday!

 

So, in just a few weeks I will be able to fry an egg on the dashboard, add yet another mismatched bikini to my unwanted drawer, contribute to the world’s hair deforestation, suffer gruesome sights of wobbly bits falling out of tight pouches, and get third degree burns from five minutes in the sun. But so long as I can go barefoot it’s all good and my Haribos just can’t wait!

 

First published on FM Magazine April 2008