Want to Know What “Real Bodies” Look Like?

It doesn’t matter how many times we’re told a bikini body is just a body in a bikini — the thought of wearing one causes anxiety.

The list of “flaws” one could have is endless and ever-growing: no thigh gap, cellulite, arm flab, belly pooch, saddlebags. What exactly are saddlebags? I don’t know, but lots of YouTubers can tell you how to get rid of them.

(Hasn’t worked, in my experience.)

However, I have mastered the shortcut to body confidence. Go to the beach.

The beach is a welcome wake-up call, a sobering reminder of what bodies actually look like outside the pages of magazines. Of course we tell ourselves that nobody really looks like Beyoncé or Candice Swanepoel, not even Beyoncé or Candice Swanepoel. Rationally, we know there is nothing wrong with us, that our bodies deserve their annual airing like anybody else’s.

But there is a new insidious pantheon of comparison that gnaws further at our self-confidence. Social media, particularly the flesh gallery that is Instagram, convinces us that non-celebrity normal people — girls next door and guys who work at Target — are all lithe and lovely; that this kind of beach body is the only beach body; that we stand alone with our pinchable inches and summer bacne.

We fall short when our scale measures only from Miranda Kerr doing backbends to T-Swift’s toned squad jumping for joy. We perpetuate unrealistic goals by stalking before-and-after fitness hashtags with fervor. We forget that our own friends blur and crop. We forget we do it too. And while the celebrations of so-called “real” women, like plus-sized model Ashley Graham or a lightly wrinkled and heavily badass Helen Mirren, are very welcome — necessary, in fact, these examples are totemic. Many women don’t have the smooth, perfect skin and beautiful proportions Graham boasts, and while Mirren may be 70, she has clearly never sunbathed until her skin peeled off or eaten donuts for breakfast.

The beach, however, confirms that most digital personas are likely well-lit, often Photoshopped and wholly unrealistic. People at the beach, like you and me, have flab and scars and cellulite and other evidence of a life well lived, a life where bills have to be paid and tequila seems like a good idea at 2 a.m. and the line at the salad bar looked a bit longer than the one for burritos.

Post Labor Day, take it to the streets while folks are still wearing shorts. Be discreet in sweaty locker rooms; FaceTime your grandmother. Observe in grocery stores and laundromats — anywhere you can see regular people doing regular things unfiltered and off-line. Remind yourself that the majority of us weren’t born under the shade of Valencia with kohl-rimmed eyes and a six-pack. If you were, that’s so cool.

But if you weren’t, come on down. Bring your camera. It’s beautiful out here.

Photographs by Martin Parr.

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