The body beautiful—Brazilian style
Everyone looks the same in the water
Earlier this week, almost everyone from the truck piled on the Netuno for a cruise, swimming and snorkelling in the bays off the coast near Paraty, Brazil.
The waters were calm and clear, the lunch was tasty, the boat was packed and there was more exposed skin than you’d see in a nudist colony.
I’m still staggered! There were bikinis, thongs and budgie smugglers everywhere.
Poor John and I were depressingly overdressed in shorts and t-shirts. In fact, the girls from the truck had extremely modest bikinis by comparison. The boys weren’t quite so out-of-place, because board shorts seem to have some standing in Brazilian society.
But the most reassuring and pleasing aspect of it all was that it doesn’t matter one bit what shape your body is—you can wear a bikini or a budgie smuggler with pride.
Overdressed overlanders in Brazil. Hippy came along for the fun. He doesn’t worry about his figure
We set sail with a boatload of saggy boobs, squidgy bums, flabby guts, hair in strange places, and a total of about 3 square metres of swimwear fabric—for 125 people.
There were grannies wearing thongs—on their bums, not their feet—and bikini tops the size of 50-cent pieces. Guts overhung waistbands and boobs underhung bra tops. There were hairy legs, hairy chests and hairy backs (on women too).
It was obvious that nobody had been sucked in by one of those charlatan get-rid-of-your-cellulite deals. And nobody felt the need to suck in their stomach either.
The display of skin was rather disarming at first and then it dawned on me that this is exactly the way the world ought to be. Young’uns, especially girls, shouldn’t be obsessed with thinness and dieting and all the other unhealthy things that go with being panicky about body image.
The Brazilians have it right. Love your body. Show it off if you want to, and don’t ever act self-conscious. Perhaps they can bottle the thinking.
Now the dilemma—do I have the courage to buy and wear a bikini—clearly I have the figure for it!
Where to next? 
BIG like…
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Ditto!
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Too funny, your description of fatty bodies, boobs and things. They know what is important in life!!!! I am keeping my double chins.
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They sure do! If you’re keeping the chins, you gotta cherish them!
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Your writing is absolutely brilliant LP. I’m so pleased I found your blog (thank you Antarctica!).
Adored your description of the body not-so-beautiful and all that flesh!
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Thanks Sue. I have a lot of fun writing the blog, and it’s wonderful when people appreciate it. Where are you in Australia? We’ll have to have a chin-wag someday. 🙂
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Peggy,
I think you should have a bikini for every day of the week and two to spare in case it rains when you’re washing the chlorine out after you’ve been to the pool. You’ll remember that swimming very fondly if, as I think is the case, you’re arriving in Canberra on the weekend. We’ve been over 30 all week with no rain and on one of the days on the weekend it’s supposed to be 37; so don’t come on that day!!
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One of the gals on our trip brought nine bikinis with her. She had to work hard to use them all, but Brazil came to the rescue. I, on the other hand, brought one pair of ratty old swimmers and four changes of clothes—two for summer and two for winter. Guess I’ll wear the summer ones on the way home. 🙂
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Sooo, where are all the sexy photos of the young, middle aged females…. talk is cheap, need photos please LOL. I see the photo of Sponge Bob, but on the wrong body type LOL. Glad to see that people decided to just have fun and forget about being to conservative and hiding most of thier body parts… If it was me, I might be swimming in my birthday suit.. but would wear dark sunglasses so know one would recognize me LOL
Sy S.
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Some beach photos are coming up so stay tuned for some skin! 🙂
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LP, are you allowed to put x-type rated photos on the internet and your blog?
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Good one, Sy! It won’t be lots and lots of skin. 🙂
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