Bairbre Power

After plenty of self-scolding, I managed to pull on the swimsuit and there in the heat of the sauna, I parked the fat-shaming

Stepping into your swimming togs on the first day of the summer holidays can be an anxious time, don’t you agree? No amount of prepping with earnest body brushing, smoothing pedicures (always with a blade rather than a cheese grater) and a distractingly gorgeous bright shade of nail polish will eliminate the fear.

If you’re like me, you’re worried you will look like one big white blob on a beach where everyone is tanned and dressed in micro bikinis, small enough to fit in your pocket.

I still remember the curious looks I got as a teenager spending summers in France — I looked like a milk bottle alongside my tanned Breton peers, who were the epitome of chic with their citrusy perfumes, sallow, Mediterranean complexions and a uniform of striped T-shirts and menthol cigarettes, all set off by a summer soundtrack of R&B.

I’ve long got over my pale Celtic skin and it’s something of a badge of honour that I never ventured into the mahogany world of false tans.

I hate the smell of false tan and how they can rub off on your clothes and bed sheets. While friends have found false tans that suit them and have factored in a Sunday night routine of batch cooking and putting on their tanning for the week ahead, I’ve never found a colour that looked natural on me. And besides, I think it looks weird the number of people (watch out for them on the telly) who possess tanned arms and legs, but their hands and feet are white, like they were grafted on from a different person.

The downside of sticking resolutely with my pale white pallor means that the first few days of the annual summer holidays can be awkward on the beach or at the pool. My nervous first-day drill involves arriving in swimming togs with a sarong the size of a small tablecloth, or with all sorts of distractions like big hat and beach bag to hide my cellulite and milky skin.

However, by the end of the first week, I’ve usually moved on from my body anxiety and it’s amazing what a few days of sunshine on your back will do for your confidence.

Just as the first batch of freckles are coming through, my Oirish inhibitions ebb away on the sunset tide.

Heck, I get so bold, I’ll even grab some of the sunbeds directly beside ‘the skinny people’ who earlier in the week, I’d have been hiding behind my floating pink flamingo to avoid.

That said, there’s a big difference doing the annual swimsuit striptease in summer and doing it just four weeks after Christmas. When we’ve been wearing lots of layers, boots and hats to fend off the cold, stepping out in public in a swimsuit in midwinter is a very different challenge, but one I embraced last week after I decided to action a gift voucher I’ve had in my drawer.

So I took myself off on a spa break with a pal for two and a half days of pampering and emptying my head. I surprised myself at how quickly I managed to put my hand on the new polka dot swimsuit

I bought for last summer’s French vacances, but then I had to face down post-Christmas guilt and clamber into it. How I cursed those Yuletide mince pies, the hand-tomouth chocolate fetish watching movies and the lashings of brandy butter. And that was just Christmas.

Let’s not forget an autumn spent sipping Aperols while I desperately tried to recreate the Cote d’Azur back in rainy Dublin.

There was lots of self-scolding but I managed to pull on the swimsuit and once at the spa, I dispensed with my civvies and wrapped myself up in a big white robe. Unpacking my de-stress kit bag of candles, cashmere socks and a 10-minute Korean sheet mask (for when I was getting ready for dinner), I smugly congratulated myself on bringing the right ‘leisure’ clothes. I wasn’t in the pool area a wet minute when I realised I’d brought the wrong type of swimsuit. I wasn’t so smug after all.

Strapless swimsuits are perfectly suited to strategic sunbathing to eliminate annoying tan lines, but they are not so good when you’re attempting an aqua aerobics class for the first time in your life and there’s lots of jumping out of the water.

Then I regretted the frilly skirt bit on this polka dot number and as I set off to a midafternoon sauna ritual outdoors, I desperately wished I’d packed something long and lean

— and preferably black — so I would blend in better. Thankfully, everyone was friendly and encouraging, and after staring at dimpled flesh hoping it would disappear, I did what my grown-up children are always instructing me to do: I got over myself.

There in the 90 degree heat, I parked the fat-shaming malarkey and all those negative thoughts about ‘wine tummy’ and ‘dimpled’ legs simply evaporated in the steam. What came next surprised me even more.

People who know me well know I don’t like the cold. I’m always pulling on socks and layers and turning up the heat at home, so imagine my surprise when I pushed the aforementioned polka dot swimsuit under an ice bucket and pulled the chain. Did you hear me screaming? That was about 3.12pm last Wednesday, two miles from Enniscorthy. To copper-fasten this new zeal for sweatin’ out the old stuff, I plunged my hands into a bucket of crushed ice and proceeded to rub it vigorously up and down my limbs. Flashing my winter flesh and postChristmas figure to all and sundry was no longer filling my head. The combination of heat and cold was new and thrilling.

In fact, I loved it so much, I went back and repeated the ritual a second time. For someone who just hours earlier was all hung up and about losing my street armour of clothes, I was delighted that my selfconsciousness about my midlife body had disappeared.

This new bravado does not mean you’ll be finding me on a nudist beach next summer, showing my cellulite off to the world, but I certainly sweated out some of my misgivings about me.

I’m glad it only took a hot sauna and a few buckets of freezing ice on the head to bring me to my senses.