A few years ago, I read a quote by
filmmaker and writer Nora Ephron that embedded itself in my brain the way only
an Adele song or the memory of a perfect chocolate-chip cookie can: “Oh, how I
regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young
is reading this, go right this minute, put on a bikini and don’t take it off
until you’re 34.” I was 30 then smack in the middle of Ephron’s bikini book
ends. I thought I had many string-bikini years ahead of me. After all, I was
the kind of girl who worried not whether her sequined tap shorts were too
look-at-me tiny but whether those sequins would lose lustre in the pool.
When
should you hang up your bikini strings?
I
was 30 then—smack in the middle of Ephron’s bikini book ends.
But at 32, inching precariously closer to
Ephron’s cut-off, I found myself increasingly grappling with what to wear to
the beach. With Canada’s brief summer season, choosing the right swimwear
assumes sartorial importance verging on the monumental, and the fear of outré
outfits not properly showcased or savoured lingers like steam after a summer
storm. For Ephron, 71, it’s all about maximizing the time you have with the
pieces you love. “It isn’t that I regret not having worn them,” she tells me
over the phone from New York. “It’s that I regret not having worn them more
often.”
“It’s
that I regret not having worn them more often.”
Thus inspired, I looked for bikini role
models and found that an impressive number fell outside of Ephron’s age range.
While Canadian women tend to be very conservative with their swimsuit choices,
in other parts of the world women of all ages octogenarians included wear
bikinis. Take Helen Mirren, who, at 63, famously rocked a red two-piece with
the verve and ab tone of a woman half her age.
I foresee my geriatric self-wishing I’d
made a bandeau bikini top and high-waist shorts my beach uniform of choice. So,
in an effort to mitigate sartorial regret, I recently spent a week-long Florida
vacation wearing that very ensemble. I felt more comfortable as the week wore
on, but I also realized that feeling comfortable isn’t the same as feeling
awesome. And a bikini needs to make you feel awesome. Wearing something because
you won’t have a chance to wear it later is like eating an entire chocolate
cake because you’re not sure you’ll taste something as good again. Of course
you will. It’ll just be different.
And
a bikini needs to make you feel awesome.
While I struggle to figure out where I fall
on the Ephron-Mirren continuum, I take comfort in knowing that while I may not
be able to wear my bikini for much longer, it’s partly because I have worn it
nearly threadbare. In so doing, I’m le to look forward to the more mature
ruched one piece I’ve had my eye on. “The luckiest thing that has happened to
any of us over an age is black,” muses fPhrOn, who cites suits as her current
swimwear of choice. “Black has saved us.
