Graceful Sunbathing

As I lay in the sunshine yesterday, with my shiny face, frizzy hair and melting makeup, I thought about THOSE people on holiday that manage to look glamorous even in 90 degree heat, and I started to wonder just how they do it.

I’m puzzled as to how their hair stays in an smooth, elegant chignon, even when they’ve been in the pool, because not only do I not know how to do an smooth, elegant chignon in the first place, but if I went into the water with one, I’d look like Medusa by the time I got out.

I want to know how they manage to get an even tan from the start and escape the ‘streaky bacon’ look, because for the first few days when I take off my bikini, all I find is startling white skin surrounded by a perfect red outline where I’ve missed with the suntan lotion.

THEY WEAR FULL MAKEUP!  When I’ve tried wearing makeup my face just melts like candle wax and so-called ‘waterproof’ mascara creeps into my ‘laughter lines’ to give me eyes that can rival a panda’s.  And unlike me, their nail polish is chip-free, underarms are stubble-free and there’s not a ‘spider’s leg’ in sight.

Wearing high heels round a pool is just a health and safety disaster waiting to happen.  Not only that, but how, with sweaty feet, do their stilettos not flip flop off at every step and give them friction blisters?  Or do their feet just not sweat like normal people’s, either?

Then there’s the whole sunlounger debacle.  They’re ergonomically designed to be uncomfortable, aren’t they?  On holiday, they’re usually the white slatted affairs with gaps just big enough to wedge various pieces of your anatomy through, then your body heats up as you lie there and all of a sudden you have the whole ‘popping a cork out of a champagne bottle’ scenario when you try to get up.

These people also look unperturbed by reading on a sunbed, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, yet I know from personal experience that if you lie on your front to read you either have to prop yourself up on your elbows which makes you look like a performing seal and gives you a crick in your neck, or you put your book on the floor and it either gets soaked or you squash your bits.

Or you lie on your back and the lounger will either collapse without warning and send you sprawling or you’ll sit slightly off centre and it will catapult you right off.  On the other hand, if you lie flat you have to position your book directly in front of the sun to avoid the glare which results in pins and needles in your arms from all the blood rushing away from your hands.

And it remains a mystery as to how these people manage to alight from sunbeds without risking embarrassment or injury, because whenever I try it, my arms and legs flail like a turtle on its back, my thighs squelch together and sound like I’ve farted, I have red, slat shaped marks that vie for attention with the streaky bacon and I need a skin graft to replace the backs of my thighs that have been cruelly ripped off where my sweat has welded me to the damn plastic 🙂