My friends and I booked our spring break trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic back in October. We couldn’t wait!
As a junior, I have come to recognize the importance of exercise in my life as a compliment to my emotional and physical wellness, which I lacked in my underclassman years. That being said, the looming picture of myself in a bikini the first week in March as opposed to June meant I had to be “bikini ready” three months earlier, warranting a constant routine of exercise and moderation eating in my daily schedule.
I had never been on a “typical” a.k.a. crazy– spring break trip until this year, thus having no real idea of what to expect—other than the personal expectations I had been mentally setting for myself for months. I expected to be surrounded by hundreds of other barley dressed college students my age for a week and I wanted to feel comfortable in my skin.
I’m not saying my friends and I went on a Jessica Simpson in preparation for her role as Daisy Duke type diet, but I am saying that we consciously ate healthier and went to the gym on a consistent basis. On the opposite spectrum, the occasional late night Pokey Sticks and Kiwi indulgences were never eliminated in fear that if we tried to count calories and diet too consciously we would fail miserably. After all, our goal was to shed those pesky ten extra pounds that would just look better left out of that sunkissed post-spring break cover photo.
Collectively having reached our personal goals and just feeling an overall sense of our individual accomplishments among us, we headed to the DR—bound for one of the craziest weeks of our lives!
My expectations, our expectations, my personal fears, our shared doubts—were all for nothing!! Every girl did not look like a Victoria Secret super model in her bikini; in fact, every girl was not even wearing a bikini. My fears of not being toned enough to jump around on the beach all day and not giggle like a Jell-O mold were all for nothing! My fears of my thighs touching in pictures and having guys stare at me with the looks of rejection in their eyes were for nothing! My fears of not being able to have the time of my life because I was too busy worrying about what I looked like in a bathing suit in front of hundreds of my peers were for nothing!
No, I do not have Carrie Underwood’s legs, or looked like Miranda Kerr in a bikini last week but I was not alone. None of the other girls I saw looked picture perfect in their bathing suits no matter how tanned, toned, tall, thin, wide, or narrow they appeared. In fact, no one was staring, judging, or even focused on what you looked like erratically bouncing around to DeadMau5 beats and screaming at the tops of your lungs—because the person next to them, and the person next to that person, and the person after that were all doing it too. The guys didn’t ever care. The guys were too busy ogling over the collective masses of barley dressed females at their finger tips to individually point out the minor flaws of a girl seven inches shorter than them down in front.
Now that spring break is in the past and what a bittersweet memory it is, I’ve been thinking back over this past semester at the preparation I endured and the changes I made to my daily lifestyle all for, for what? My fears went unnoticed by others; or rather they didn’t turn out to be actual fears after all. But more importantly, I have come out an emotionally and physically happier and healthier person. I had the time of my life, with the best group of friends a girl could ask for and am just as happy on the inside back in dreary old State College, as I was on the outside on the white sands of Punta Cana.