Why, even at 55, I’ll never ditch my bikini
and MARIELLA FROSTRUP says no woman should have to give in to the one-piece police either
lAST week, I went swimming in the Baltic Sea. The refreshing, but freezing, temperature of the water dictated that I wore a 20- year- old swimming costume.
It would have been easy for anyone watching me climb into this ancient, but infinitely practical, piece of beachwear to assume that I’d finally bowed to societal pressure, as so many women do in middle age, and put my bikini days behind me.
Absolutely not. The one-piece was a necessary one-off: I was on a spa trip to Kurhotel Skodsborg in Copenhagen. Here, a ritual called SaunaGus involved dipping in the freezing water and was actually better suited to a wetsuit.
I love my bikinis, and am determined to carry on wearing one into my 80s. No matter how I wither, age will never be a barrier to my wearing one.
And it was with this in mind that I rejoiced at the recent pictures of model Kate Moss — the ultimate bikini devotee, now in her mid-40s — still holding true to her first love on holiday in the South of France this week.
The string bikini is Kate Moss — and it’s the one thing we have in common.
From my late teens, when I first holidayed in a hot country, I’ve adored bikinis, too.
It’s a two-piece facilitator of all-over bronzing and — to someone who grew up in Norway, where snow lies on the ground for eight months of the year — a symbol of gorgeous, hot sun, warm seas and white beaches we dreamed about throughout all those cold, dark months.
I had eczema until the age of 25. The only time of year it vanished was when my skin was exposed to sun and sea, so I came to associate the bikini with feeling more comfortable and non-itchy.
Now a mother of two in my 50s, and obviously more saggy and wrinkly, I don’t care in the least how I look. And the even better news for yours truly is that the invisibility of middle age means nobody looks at me. Frankly, I could probably step out naked and barely raise an eyebrow.
Why should I give up the bikini? Especially when I look back and recall all the pleasure it’s given me over the years?
So, here it is: my love affair with the bikini over the years, in pictures, which, I hope, has several more decades to go . . .
TWENTIES
AS IS always the case, I never appreciated how perfectly acceptable I looked in a bikini in my youth.
In my 20s, like so many young women, I was caught up in a cycle of emotionally prompted weight loss and gain.
There have been times in my life when I’ve felt overweight: never obese, but a good stone over my comfort zone. Yet, even then, I wore bikinis — I just kept the ties loose so they didn’t dig in. Yet, despite my youthful insecurities, I was never body-shy.
Perhaps it’s a Scandinavian thing. My father walked around the house stark naked for years — much as I wished he’d cover up — so I was accustomed to nudity as a matter of course.
I think my lack of inhibition is also to do with the fact my body has never been my asset. I mean, it does what it’s meant to and, thankfully, hasn’t let me down over the years, but unlike professional models and actors, it has never been my ‘bread and butter’.
Happily, that means I’ve had the luxury of being able to view my body as being more utilitarian than seductive.
Now I have a teenage daughter who has few scruples about acquiring my possessions, including any bikinis she likes the look of.
It’s interesting to be ageing and fading as she blossoms, and I hope that my lack of inhibition and hard- won confidence will rub off on her and her body image. I look at her, think: ‘Wow,’ and pray she has a better sense of how beautiful she is than I did in my youth, while knowing what exciting years lie ahead of her.
THIRTIES
MY 30s were — famously — my singleton years, during which I was presenting TV shows on the arts, books and current affairs, and, in 2000, I judged the Booker Prize.
During this decade, most of my holidays were taken with my best friend, Natalie Rucellai, whom I met through a boyfriend when I was 21.
When she moved to Antigua for three years, I spent a month with her every Christmas.
When she married an Italian, I continued imposing myself on her and, every summer, I gatecrashed their holidays.
Her husband was incredibly gracious and treated me like an errant sister.
Clearly, I needed many bikinis for these marvellous trips and Natalie and I used to buy each other matching ones for fun. When she went to Brazil, she brought us back little frilled thongs, which, to my shame, I wore topless in the Caribbean.
This was the decade when I discovered exercise. Having had a bad back since my 20s (whenever I went through periods of emotional turmoil, my back would go), I quickly found that the only way of negotiating my condition was to develop a strong core.
I’ve exercised ever since — everything from going to the gym, to Zumba and Pilates, and now running, and it has stood me in good stead.
I’m sure that this long-term maintenance is responsible for the fact I’m still upright.
Along with a healthy diet with plenty of vegetables, I’ve always felt ‘bikini ready’, whatever my size or stage of life.
The Millennium was notable as I enjoyed my last single holiday before meeting my husband. I was 38 and, with a group of single friends on a yacht moored in Mustique, bikini-clad most of the time.
We were only supposed to be there for a night, but, thanks to the hospitality of the residents, including Mick
Jagger, we stayed for five days and then sailed off down the Grenadines. It was a pretty hedonistic time.
FORTIES
I met my husband, Jason mcCue, on a charity trek in Nepal (no bikinis on that trip!). We married in 2003 and our children, molly and Dan, were born in 2004 and 2005.
Aged 41 and seven months pregnant with my daughter, we went to stay at George Clooney’s villa on Lake Como.
I thought it was going to be a quiet weekend with him and his then-girlfriend, Lisa Snowdon. But we arrived to a dinner table of the cast of Ocean’s eleven and their perfect, beautifully formed wives and girlfriends — Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and matt Damon and Luciana Barroso among them.
Pregnancy is never a time for feeling slender, but I soon abandoned my sarong and my inhibitions. I secretly felt marvellously fecund, with a vague sense of superiority.
I was a novelty to the other women and they were all asking how I felt. Socially speaking, I had the crown jewels.
By Sunday, I had so lost my sense of shame that I boarded a speedboat to go on a jaunt around the lake with the entire party.
Not only were they all a good decade younger than me, but I think I was the only woman wearing a bikini!
Looking back, I now wonder whether there’s a sensible sense of modesty that comes with being constantly ‘ papped’, which, unlike the superstars, I failed to embrace.
the pictures taken were syndicated round the world. An Italian newspaper printed the names of the entire boat party across my expanse of belly!
FIFTIES
WhO makes the law that you ought not to wear a bikini over the age of 50? It’s nothing to do with looks, it’s to do with comfort.
my body no longer defies gravity, along with most women my age, but I don’t like the feeling of a cold and clammy swimsuit.
A few days ago, I saw the most beautiful woman in her 80s with a long, silvery plait. She looked stunning and clearly hadn’t conformed to the unwritten diktat that, as we get older, we must sport practical haircuts and wear sensible swimsuits.
there is such an enormous fuss made about older women wearing a bikini. Look at the furore when actress helen mirren dared to wear that red bikini in her 60s. And model Jerry hall, who ventures out of her house in France on to the beach and is descended upon by paparazzi.
And now Kate moss, in St tropez. I hope this doesn’t put her off. (I suspect it probably won’t!)
But why wouldn’t you wear a bikini? You think you’ll become different when you mature, but the sense of wanting to get your body out in the sun and not be covered up in sea- soaked Lycra doesn’t dissipate just because the flesh is crumbling. Why should we enter the age of oblivion and hide away in shame, draped in big robes like Demis Roussos? Last week, at the spa in Copenhagen, the changing room was like a lifedrawing master class, full of stark naked women of all ages, and all different — some with giant breasts, others small, some with cellulite or flabby bottoms, and others with spindly arms and sporty calves. Nobody was perfect, but all magnificent.
the beach is like that: you look round and see different shapes and sizes. It’s a great leveller and makes it far harder to obsess about one’s own perceived imperfections.
I’m content with my age and the way my body is changing, and so my approach to buying swimwear hasn’t changed. I still find it easier to bikini shop abroad, where there’s more selection and it’s cheaper. that said, I love heidi Klein and melissa Odabash, though I buy them in the sales — £120 is the most I’ve ever spent.
two days before I travel anywhere, I stand tutting at my body in the bedroom mirror, convinced I’ll only wear a smock on the beach — then, on arrival, I seem to pull out the smallest bikini I can find in my luggage and head off, happily flaunting myself in the sun, sea and sand. And I will continue to do so, for as long as they allow me on the plane!