I needed more than sunscreen for adequate coverage

Every year when February hits and the weather warms up to 80 degrees, it makes me start thinking about getting some sun on the whiteness that is my skin. In college, this was always crucial because Spring Break was right around the corner, and I did not want to be the whitest girl on the beach…especially since I was already the whitest girl on the dance floor.

Anyway, the great thing about college, other than living off my parents, was that pretty much everybody I knew lived in an apartment complex with a pool, so we could spend our afternoons at the pool of our choice, reading magazines, planning the night’s activities and getting some sun.

Ah, sweet youth.

The point is that when the weather gets warm, I want to get a tan. Oh, I know ozone, shmozone…blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is that tan fat looks better than white fat. It’s a scientific fact.

And who am I to argue with science?

The nice thing is that since I have an Italian heritage, it only takes about 30 minutes of sun time to get a little glow in my skin. Of course, since my hormones went awry after childbirth, that is also the amount of time that it takes for the pigmentation above my lip to get dark and begin to look like a very bad mustache.

It’s a hot look.

However, I will take a hint of a mustache over white cellulite any day of the week.

And the fact that those are my beauty options, just confirms that the mid-30′s are a glamorous time in a woman’s life.

So, all these thoughts about getting some sun make me think back to the summer I was pregnant with Caroline. We were living in a rent house because our home was in the middle of major renovations that would hopefully be finished by the time the baby arrived. Anyway, one afternoon in late June, I was bored. P was working and I was home alone with nothing to do.

Then, in a flash of brilliance, I decided to put on a swimsuit and go sit out in the backyard and get some sun. And to maximize my getting sun efforts, I chose to put on my non-maternity bikini swimsuit.

Looking good.

I contorted my seven month pregnant body into a bikini and let’s just say that there was maximum spillage everywhere, but I figured no one would see me and really, wouldn’t a little bit of a tan make my pregnant body look so much better?

The answer was literally a big, fat no, but God bless me for being so naive. The only thing that was going to make me look better at that point was childbirth and an ensuing maximum weight loss diet plan…oh, and for the fifteen pounds of water that I was retaining in my ankles to go away.

I was in the middle of gathering my crucial laying out in the sun supplies, such as InStyle magazine, water, and a towel, when the phone rang. As I was talking on the phone, I walked out in the backyard without realizing I didn’t bring any of my things out with me. I turned to go back inside and realized I had shut, and therefore locked, the back door.

I was standing in the backyard of a rental home, seven months pregnant in a bikini swimsuit with no towel, no t-shirt, and no tarp to cover my exposed pregnant self. I immediately began weighing my options. I tried all the back windows and they were locked. I contemplated hoisting my pregnant body over the chain link fence in the hopes that the front door might be unlocked.

Now, there is a mental image. A huge, pregnant woman in a too small bikini climbing a chain link fence. It would be enough to sear your corneas forever.

And seriously, it would have taken a forklift or maybe even a crane to get me over that fence.

After I quit panicking, I realized that I did have a phone (y’all know how your brain is when you’re pregnant) so I called P on his cell phone, explained what had happened, and after he quit laughing hysterically, he said that he would get home as soon as he could, but he was about 45 minutes away.

I spent the next 45 minutes talking on the phone to Gulley while intermittently drinking water out of the garden hose to keep myself hydrated, and hanging out of an increasingly small swimsuit. I’m sure it looked like a scene straight from an episode of Cops.

Finally, P showed up to rescue his waddling damsel in distress. I ran into the house and had never been more thankful for air conditioning and maternity clothing.

I don’t know what I was thinking going out there to get some sun.

Really, it all goes back to the inherent fact that tan fat looks better than white fat. I can’t fight science people, not even while seven months pregnant.

**This post was originally published March 6, 2007**

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