Should Women Over 20 Wear a Bikini? Janet Street-Porter says NO!

Should Women Over 20 Wear a Bikini? Janet Street-Porter says NO!

Most women dread the onset of warmer weather for one reason: bikini season. The struggle to achieve the beach body of our dreams is enough to drive most of us over the edge. But one woman says she has banned bikinis from her vacations, and is much better for it.

Janet Street Porter  collects supplied to Ailsa Leslie

Janet Street Porter
collects supplied to Ailsa Leslie

From The Daily Mail:

There’s nothing I loathe more than failure. Why focus on the things that make us feel we haven’t quite made the grade?

So this summer holiday, like every other for the past 20 years, I shall be living by one simple rule: bikinis are banned.

Despite reading about numerous miracle diets and flab-busting routines over the past two months, I am sticking to my guns.

I’ve no intention of ever becoming ‘bikini ready’. What grown woman in her right mind deludes herself that her body will ever be ‘ready’ for this ridiculous garment? Why naively believe two tiny strips of strategically placed fabric can perform a miracle?

A bikini simply makes all women over the age of 20 feel exposed, vulnerable and a little bit ridiculous. Put one on, head to the beach or pool and there’s always going to be a gorgeous teenager looking 200 per cent better than you, without making any effort whatsoever.

They won’t have done a single sit-up or lifted anything heavier than their smartphone. They won’t have cut out carbs or given up booze. They will simply be lying there being young.

You, on the other hand, will skulk from your lounger to the water, sucking in your stomach as you scuttle towards the waves, clenching your buttocks and arching your back, emulating Cindy Crawford on the catwalk in your mind. Ha! Ha! Ha!

You will actually look like a woman who is dying to go to the loo, and the only creature you are going to attract is a jellyfish.

The bikini is thoroughly evil, as the most efficient (and cruel) way of separating the women from the girls. It’s the fashion industry’s way of making mature women feel rubbish. It’s underwear to swim in with zero support, and there’s nowhere to hide.

For the past 20 years Janet Street-Porter has proudly lived by one simple rule: bikinis are banned

It can’t suck in your sagging stomach or airbrush out your appendix scar. A bikini isn’t a piece of high-tech engineering made of reinforced concrete or steel.

Flimsy material, a bit of strategic ruching, some foam pads and thick panels of tight Lycra can’t cantilever drooping breasts back up six inches, raise a floppy bottom or divert attention from your mottled skin.

Jazzy patterns or eye-popping geometric prints can’t disguise rolls of flab. Big pants just move the saggy bit to around your waist, where it settles like a doorstep.

An underwired bra shifts the loose flesh in a backwards direction towards the base of your shoulder blades, where it sits in a dreadful diagonal pleat.

The ones with thick corseted control knickers never dry – and are impossible to prise off when wet.

As for festooning your bikini with ’embellishment’ – lavish beading, fringing and frills to distract from any droopy bits – all they actually do is make you look like an out-of-season Christmas tree waiting for a star to go on the top.

It’s a total mystery to me why grown women think that putting all their bits on display and hoisting up their breasts like a pair of half-set jellies on a plate makes them seem alluring, sexy or seductive. Why on earth would I want to turn the clock back to my teenage years, to pretend that 50 years of eating and drinking haven’t taken their toll on my torso?

So what do you think? Are you still hell-bent on becoming bikini-body ready, or are you comfortable rocking a swimsuit that shows a little less skin?

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