A love letter to my bikini
Dear bikini, how do i love thee? Let me count the ways… by counting the number of you I own: 23, or 23.5 if you count the bottoms that got separated from their matching top afer a terrible accident in one of those swimming costume dryers. That may seem like an awful lot for a woman who lives in the UK and rarely goes swimming, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Because, afer a lifetime of being fearful of the bikini – or, more specifically, my body – I’m learning to embrace it with gusto.
I’ve always had a hate-hate relationship with my body. Eventually, via bouts of depression, a decade of bulimia and a ruinous experience with alcoholism and addiction, I realised I was going to have to start a love-love relationship with it, or spend my life in misery. So I started celebrating it. I ran a marathon in my underwear and started posting pictures on Instagram of me in bikinis (I’m a size 18 to 20). Every time I do this, someone tells me I’m ‘brave’ and that they wouldn’t dare wear to a bikini in public. This is why I have so many two-pieces: because I am on a mission to let the world know that, in 2019, it shouldn’t be deemed brave for a female to go to a beach in a bikini.
I wrote a book about the journey to feeling comfortable in my own body – and remembered all those times I felt self-conscious getting into a swimming costume. The times I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, sucking in my stomach and arranging towels to cover cellulite that literally nobody cared about. And it made me sad that I’d wasted so much energy hating on myself. I love the freedom I have now that I’ve realised our bodies are amazing! And the freedom a bikini gives me to embrace my body in public, without getting arrested. So, thank you to all the bikinis that have allowed me to be me. You’ll never know the joy it gives me that
I can wear you now with pride. love Bryony x