I love sun tanning. I hate tan lines. I wear really small bikinis. The size of my bikinis has shrunk rapidly over the last three years. At this point my parents are just glad that I’m not laying out naked. Unless the beach allows it. In which case it is fair game.

As beach season approaches I see more and more magazine covers touting the “Best Bikini Workout” or proclaiming “You can loose 10 lbs in 1 week”. The normally chilled out gym is now full of girls I have never seen before trying to get bikini ready. Many of my friends are worried about finding the perfect suit that hides their “flaws.”

I haven’t always been comfortable in a bikini. Throughout all of middle school I refused to wear anything less than a one-piece + swim trunks + a tank top or t-shirt. My mom went along with it. Women, as we grow up, go through a phase in which we don’t recognize ourselves. One day your tiny chest that didn’t necessitate a bra has quadrupled in size and all you want to do is throw on a baggy sweatshirt and pretend it hasn’t happened. I pretended for 3-4 years but once I hit a D-cup there wasn’t much I could do anymore to hide that  I had boobs, and big boobs at that.

I am also strangely short waisted. On the upside, that means I have ridiculously long legs. On the downside, it is physically impossible for me to have the coveted “hourglass” shape. There simply isn’t space for it between the end of my ribcage and the top of my hips. I could try to diet and lose weight but no matter what I would just be a skinnier rectangle.

When I hit 14 I started to get comfortable in my skin and started wearing non-athletic shorts that hit above the knee. Since than, my day-to-day wardrobe has stayed pretty conservative. I don’t wear short-shorts or super mini-skirts. I don’t own a mini-dress. But man, my bikinis are tiny. They are functional – I can swim, surf, and run around in them, but not much else.

As we enter beach season, and inevitably women across America start freaking out about showing skin, I am glad to be comfortable in my skin and not worried about visible tan lines.