Life’s a beach for voluptuos women

A stalker by any other name is probably the man I encountered at a Durban beach recently when the kids and I were on holiday.

Now, most people are familiar with the horrible sights at the beaches during the festive season, where some people simply jump into the water in their underwear as if being there was a spur-of-the-moment decision. The reason I say that is, had their trip been planned properly, surely they would have brought along more decent swimming gear.

We are all too familiar with the embarrassing sights where a swimmer takes a dip in his or her underwear only to emerge from the waves, sans anything but sand from head to toe, because all his or her clothes have been swept by the tide.

The other scenario that would make for a video on SA ’s Funniest Moments is when a big woman decides to take a swim in her petticoat, with all the confidence that she is covered up. But once the cloth sucks in the water, it clings to her body and becomes a see-through, and that for me is tantamount to public indecency.

Nevertheless, I suspect that most people have grown a thick skin for these sorry sights, especially around the beach, because come to think of it, what is worse: the see-through on a lumpy, bumpy body or a g-string that separates two exposed buns?

And again, a question needs to be asked: is it fair that only thin women can parade semi-naked around the beach, while their bigger sisters have to hide behind long skirts, tights and shorts?

Once some of us were skinny and flaunting our stuff on some of the beaches. In those days we were jumping in and out around the waves with confidence. I recall once that one not-so-bright companion started shouting and pointing towards what he called a “shark” in the water.

After we had stopped briefly sensing eminent danger, the moron broke out in laughter, while pointing to this huge person who seemed stuck in the water.

So, the combination of beaches and fat people will always be comical. I have seen horrible pictures of fat people on cellphones and I made a promise that I would never find myself in that position – where someone could use my image to entertain friends.

But there are limited options for bigger babes like me. I’ve seen big mammas choose to wear a long dresses and jump into the water, then having people looking at them as if they have no right to be there. Besides the dress soaks in water and becomes too heavy. Plus, the sand gets everywhere and these mammas end up looking like wet sandbags.

Even in the years when I was skinny, I used to watch bigger people struggling in the water and pray that the day the Lord decided to bless me with Lotto money, He should do it while I could go to Mauritius and still look good in a bikini.

I have since watched my hopes of wearing a bikini in Mauritius fade as my prayers keep bouncing off the ceiling. The only thing that is bulging in my life is not my pocket but my belly. Some luck, but as the Lotto slogan goes “one-day is one-day”.

But the reality is that a week ago, I had to be at the beach at the behest of my young children and I had no means of shrinking my body.

If you are an older parent with younger children, you end up feeling and thinking young because you are always running after them. Youngsters don’t walk; they run all the time. That is why when the lifts were not working at the apartment we were staying in, and the children decided that we couldn’t wait any longer and went for the stairs, I simply followed.

I quickly forgot that we stayed on the 21st floor as they hopped from floor to floor while poor me was limping after them, taking it one step at a time.

I only remembered how far we had come when we reached the 10th floor and my joints were aching and my knees had locked, refusing to budge.

I could not walk for two days afterwards. That said, I still followed them to the beach, but after years of watching “fat people” as the Chinese refer to what we politically correctly say are “well-endowed people”, or “full-figured people”, I went there not in my underwear, nightdress or tights.

I was armed with a pair of decent Speedo swimming shorts with a matching top. Then just to make sure nobody makes a video out of me, I wrapped myself in a kanga that I had intended to shed as soon as I hit the water.

But for some reason I clung to the kanga – silly me. I went in with it, despite all my experience of seeing people’s clothes getting peeled off by the waves; I still went in wrapped in a kanga, because it made me feel protected from the prying eyes.

But the clever sea simply lifted it up each time the waves hit me. And I guess my dimply bottom was exposed all while I blissfully thought I was covered. I didn’t think much of this until the “Beach Stalker” arrived and perched himself right behind me.

I should have been flattered because the guy could have been in his mid 30s. He quietly took a position on the sand behind where I was frolicking in the waves. Everything looked clean until I realised that he was not gazing into space but watching my behind as the waves kept lifting the kanga, and he had this sheepish grin: then I knew there was a problem.

I said to my daughter that this man starring at me was making me uncomfortable. My daughter’s response sealed it for me. I had to get out of the water immediately.

She said: “You can’t blame the man when you have turned yourself into a Sun Babe; can’t you see your behind is exposed?”