Bikini Wars: Who Wore It Best? Not The Tabloids!

While at my gym the other day, I picked up a sweat-infused copy of OK! magazine. This being the Bikini Issue, I flipped through pages upon pages of the rich, famous, and unknown (by me) wearing varied skimpy bathing costumes, before getting to the good part (namely, the end.) In the usual format, celebrities were organized into groups based on how good each looked in his or her respective bathing suit. There were the fit, the unfit, and… actually, that’s it. Because in “The Bikini Issue,” there is no margin for error, not for a roll of fat, nor a patch of cellulite (proudly circled in red, like a spelling error caught by a 3rd grade teacher.)

This format seems out of touch with the reality of the great swarms of almost fit or mildly gone to seed that populate our malls in numbers that suggest herds of wildebeest upon the African plains. In real life, a slightly porky gentleman sunning himself on the beach commands as little attention as a dead crab washed up a few feet away- mild disgust followed by quick forgetfulness. However, in the tabloids, this man is cause for much greater concern, and the forgetfulness takes much longer – at least until the next Bikini Issue comes out.

On one page, two pictures of Donald Trump’s exes, Ivana Trump, 61, and Marla Maples, 46, were placed side by side. A caption underneath lauded Maples for her fine physique while giving Ivana’s ‘bikini bod’ a less favorable review. These women represent the older generation of Trump’s exes, who, famously, steadily decrease in age as he himself grows older and balder (although perhaps not poorer.) Picking on the oldest in Trump’s barn of discarded ex-wives for her wrinkles and failure to look significantly less than her age in a bikini only reinforces society’s prizing of youth over substance. Not that I would expect Ok! to be a beacon of righteousness shining among the other bikini issues, but they could at least make more of an effort to appeal to their older fan base. Plenty of older ladies read Ok! (as I can definitively conclude, having seen several issues hanging around my grandma’s living room,) and the least the magazine could do is give them a shout out, rather than bashing their one representative among Trump’s prior spouses.

After all, who is entitled to wear bikinis? The young? The sexy? Or whoever wants to, free of judgment? Clearly only A. and B. are correct. If you look like shit in your bikini, Ok! and America will shit on you. If you eat a macrobiotic diet, do lunges and sit ups with your trainer, and get the requisite lipo on your stomach, thighs, arms, rear and perhaps nasolabial fold, then you will be able to appear bikini-clad without criticism within the pages of Ok! and other fine publications well into your 40’s, and maybe even beyond!