Every spring, like clockwork, the “Are you beach body ready?” messages roll back in — and so does our urge to talk back to them. Over the years, a lot of us here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue have weighed in on the myth of the “perfect beach body” and the body-image baggage it drags along. With swim season upon us again, here’s a round-up of past posts on the beach body and body image, in case you need a little reinforcement before you head to the water.
Funny, not funny—turning around those “beach body” blues — by Tracy
Tracy revisits the only beach-body advice worth keeping (“1. have a body 2. go to the beach”), the infamous London tube ad campaign, and why every spring’s “summer body” messaging still fills her with despair — and why she’s well and truly over it.
Sam is beach body ready — by Sam
Responding to Tracy, Sam shares her favourite anti-beach-body memes and reflects on why the messaging mostly rolls off her now — partly the perspective that comes with aging, and partly never having felt the “beach body ideal” was aimed at her in the first place.
Bring on the brokini! — by Sam
A case that breaking down narrow body norms should include men too. Sam celebrates playful men’s swimwear — and “elderly, larger, furry men in speedos” — because making room for all bodies at the beach makes more room for hers.
What should I wear for swimming when over 50? Whatever I want! — by Catherine
Catherine takes aim at swimwear marketing that treats women’s aging bodies as problems to be sucked in, smoothed over, or draped in yards of fabric — and asks for the genuinely radical option of simply wearing what she likes in the water.
Take your batwings and fly far far away — by Sam
Sam unpacks the daily ad for “modest” swimwear that promises to hide women’s “lives well lived,” and pushes back on the idea that you build confidence by naming parts of someone’s body a problem. Spoiler: we have arms, not batwings.
Inclusive objectification anyone? — by Tracy
Tracy asks whether a more “inclusive” Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is really progress, or whether widening the pool of who gets objectified still leaves all women measured by how sexy they appear to a straight male audience.
Bodiless Swimsuit Ads Reinforce Body Norms Too — by Elan
Elan notices an eerie new trend in swimsuit ads — suits displayed on legless, armless, photoshopped-out “bodies” — and argues that an absent body is the ultimate normative body, erasing the real, varied ones we actually swim in.
Belated Happy Bikini Day! — by Diane
Prompted by a Sandra Boynton cartoon and a friend happily rocking her bikini, Diane gathers the blog’s history of bikini-body and swimsuit-fit posts into a celebration of wearing what you like, whatever your shape.
Related
Published by
By
