I’m just going to say it.  For being 50, I’m pretty lucky.  I eat right and exercise, I’m pretty healthy and small by stature, even if my muscle  mass makes me heavier than usual.  Anyway, I say this because come spring, I usually pick out a swim suit off the rack that I think is cute and pick my size and bring it home.  We have a pool, so by the end of every season the butt on my swim suit is usually hanging like a toddler’s diaper with a big load in it…i.e., it is worn out from living in it for three months, so I buy one every season.  This year, it was a frightening experience to put on the suit I bought off the rack, in the privacy of my own home, only to see that my abdomen is more marsupial than ever, especially with the boy briefs that I thought would look cute on my very small hips.  It really, really doesn’t.  I usually don’t sweat the excess skin of giving birth to the longest babies ever born…but I certainly don’t want it hanging over my suit.  Either the fashion industry has altered sizes so they can’t be blamed for rampant eating disorders or I ballooned over night.  I have never had my butt crack exposed when putting on the bottom of a swim suit before.  It was a jaw dropping experience.  I didn’t think I changed that much over the winter,  and I even tried on last year’s suit to make sure…but since the elastic had worn out it was really hard to tell what its original form looked like.  All in all, I learned this:  I can never again just bring a suit home without trying it on…which I hate because the lighting in those rooms point out every flaw, and who needs to see their body it three views anyway?   I now know why women hate trying on and buying bathing suits in the store.  There is such great technology in the world, you would think they could invent a bathing suit that would make every woman who tried in on look awesome.  Who needs a space program or a colony on Mars, when there is middle age flesh out there to beautify!!!