Self-Esteem: The Swimsuit Test

It’s hard to believe now, but in the 1970s, the advent of the bikini became a symbol of woman’s liberation. Liberation, not alienation from one’s own body. Then, few of the women who wore a separate swimsuit were worried about the discrepancy between their body and ideal standards. Even though the stomach was not flat, like a marathon runner, the buttocks were not even remotely like Brazilian ones, and the chest was “not that” shaped.

Clothes fall … and mood

Alas, other times, other mores – now the right to wear a bikini must be earned. Most often, this “reward” is received after long and hard preparatory work, which includes diet, weight loss massages and exhausting Bikram yoga. Needless to say, in our narcissistic culture, which places great value on appearance, the softness and looseness of the body is not respected. It’s no wonder that every year since April, social media and women’s sites have been bombarding us with articles under the theme “How to pass the swimsuit test.” In their defense, it must be said that we are really talking about a test. About an exam that can spoil our relationship with ourselves. Almost no one avoids this: unpleasant moments in fitting rooms are familiar to women of any weight and age. At least everyone is equal in this.

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• Everyone’s personal body

“The ruthless lighting in the store enhances the shock of seeing your body in a bathing suit,” notes sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc (Catherine Blanc). – The clothes that hid, held, completed the silhouette, fall. We are left alone with our body. The way it really is. His appearance speaks more eloquently than any words about how we treat him. An unkind view of oneself is, of course, subjective. It is dictated by our opinion of ourselves and comparisons, more or less conscious, in which we always lose.

Sofia is 41 years old. She is a lawyer and is passionate about sports. Sofia admits that she sees only flaws in her figure. “The calves are too thick and the breasts are not firm enough. In moments when I concentrate on what I don’t like, I forget that I actually have a slim body, and my friends envy my toned buttocks. Gestalt therapist Claudia Gaule attributes this selective amnesia to the complex nature of our self-image. “They are multifaceted and changeable, as they are made up of a large number of self-images that are formed based on how we feel about ourselves and how others view us.”¹ Every time she tries on a swimsuit, 36-year-old Maria seems to hear her mother’s voice again: “Pull in your stomach and straighten your back!” “I don’t have such thoughts about myself when I’m catching a wave with my surfer husband, slender and built like a god!”

Pass the tests

• How do you feel in a swimsuit?

Beach, new place of judgment

If imperfections (real or imagined) can be miraculously dissolved by a loving gaze, they can also become completely unbearable under the gaze of beautiful strangers. But perhaps we attribute our own thoughts to others? “It all depends on how strong our self-confidence is,” says Catherine Blanc. – The stronger it is, the less we depend on the look of another and less likely to read in his eyes condemnation, disapproval or mockery. Beautiful girls come to me for a consultation, who, despite their physical perfection, live in hell!”

Although much depends on the personal history of each of us, it must be admitted that today it is really difficult to be satisfied with your body. “The aesthetic criteria of our culture have fundamentally changed the way we view ourselves,” notes philosopher Isabelle Queval. – A slender, elastic, young body is idealized today more than ever. If we buy clothes, then we win the body in a hard struggle. We live in a culture of “girophobes”. Hatred of fat is everywhere, masked by health concerns, represented in advertising and fashion by emaciated skinny women with athletic muscles.² It’s no surprise that a woman who faces her real body—her mother’s curvy body—feels disqualified from the swimsuit challenge before she can even set foot on the sand.

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• Fat: why so many emotions?

The joy of the body, with or without roundness

Last summer, 37-year-old Svetlana suddenly stopped worrying about the shortcomings of her figure. “We were vacationing with friends in Sardinia and went on a picnic on a hot day. Not far from us is a company of Italians. There were about twelve of them, they chatted incessantly and constantly laughed. The women were all overweight, definitely over forty, and wearing bright little bikinis. They radiated so much joy and sensuality that it was difficult for our husbands to concentrate on cooking meat. That day, I had almost physical proof that this was true. The truth of the body, its beauty, which consists not in the perfection of forms, but in vital energy. The next day, instead of a black one-piece swimsuit, for the first time in a long time, I decided to wear a miniature multi-colored bikini!

Claudia Gale develops this idea. “Imagine yourself on the beach not as a catwalk, but as a place of pleasure and freedom. Instead of worrying about the size of your thighs or the creases in your stomach, make it a rule to pause, just to experience life and remind yourself that I am enjoying this moment that will never come back. Then you will relate to the body in a completely different way.

¹ C. Gaule “The force of the present” (French Society of Gestalt, 2008).

³ I. Queval “The body today” (Gallimard, 2008).