By Holly Pevzner
iVillage.com
Thank you, Jennifer Garner. Thank you, thank you! There are so many ways you make looking like a normal mom seem completely acceptable and even cool -- wearing mom jeans, ripped granny panties, and oversized button-downs, just to name a few.
But my jaw dropped when I saw your lovely vacation photos in US Weekly. As you and Ben Affleck play with Violet and Seraphina, you're not wearing a tiny bikini or one of those flashy monokini things. It's a unassuming navy one-piece with spaghetti straps, a tie around the empire waist and a wee bit of a skirt.
It's a mom bathing suit! A tried-and-true, for-moms-only, no wardrobe-malfunction-here one-piece.
Then I thought, Oh no. Please don't let this magazine pick apart a beautiful, 40-year-old, mother of three, whose youngest child is a mere 4 months old. So she's in a mom-suit, I thought. It happens. She looks great! Please leave her alone. Then I read on. US didn't mock her beach choice at all. Instead, they called her "sexy." They dubbed her swimsuit "retro."
While I'm sure there are a number of moms out there who still wear bikinis (heck, I do still have one on retainer), a lot of us are a smidge more comfortable rocking the one-piece. It's not necessarily that one's body instantly goes to squishytown after a baby is born (just check out Jen in a hot red bikini two years ago).
It's more like this: When I was kid-free, what was I doing in my sexy two piece? Nothing! I laid down, got some sun, sipped a fruity drink. I (maybe) frolicked in the ocean. Essentially, I was sitting pretty. As a mom, there's no sitting (nevermind the pretty). I'm running in that bathing suit, I'm squatting in the sand building castles, I'm lifting kiddos, I'm playing catch. I need a mom suit. And apparently Jennifer Garner does, too, and that makes me remarkably happy. Perhaps this means that I look sexy and retro in mymom suit. And to that I say, Whoo!
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