Can a 50 Year Old Wear a Bikini?

Getting my first wrinkle was a huge blow to my self confidence. My god, I’m getting old, I thought to myself. Then I started getting more and more wrinkles and, to my surprise, it didn’t bother me as much. I knew I wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, and who was I trying to impress?

can a 50 year old wear a bikini
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But wearing a bikini at 50 or older? Man, that requires a whole different level of not caring. I honestly might have felt more comfortable wearing a clown costume at the beach instead. But just like how quickly I got over my shock at seeing a wrinkle for the first time, this too became much easier very quickly.

Again, who am I trying to impress? I’m too old to care about what others think. I’m secure in my body – I know it’s not as supple and youthful as it once was – but it’s still beautiful, dammit. And in this article, I want to try and convince you to adopt this attitude so that you can wear a bikini at 50 or older, if you truly want to.

You don’t have to look young to wear a bikini

In doing my research for this topic, I found many articles using aging celebrity women as examples of 50+ year olds that can rock the bikini.

Many of these women easily looked 20 or 30 years younger than their actual age. It was truly inspiring to see that age didn’t seem to affect them, but I also realized how toxic this mindset is.

The message that was implied is this: you can only wear a bikini at age 50 and over if you don’t look like you’re that old. I can’t say that I agree with that.

Keep in mind, these women are wealthy. They likely have access to the best plastic surgeons, the best dieticians, the best personal trainers, and likely live a relatively stress-free life to help them retain their youthful appearance.

Genetics may also play a factor. Plus, these photos were probably heavily edited to remove any wrinkles and to exaggerate their best features.

I want to make it clear – most of us will never look as good as those celebrity women because their image is as fake as their implants.

There should not be any qualifiers to wearing a bikini – you can wear it just because. You can wear it even if you have wrinkles, sagging skin, cellulite, surgery scars, whatever.

So if you need someone to say it to you flat out: you don’t have to look under a certain age to wear a bikini, so just do it if you want to.

Are you breaking any rules or laws?

This is obviously a rhetorical question. There are no age limits to what bikini you can wear. You can be 15 or 50 or even older, and you’re not going to get into any legal trouble for wearing a bikini.

But even if something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean that it’s accepted by society. For instance, just because it’s illegal to be openly racist doesn’t mean there still aren’t racists out there.

When it comes to wearing a bikini, I don’t think anyone would get seriously offended enough by an older woman showing skin to warrant any harassment or mistreatment unless there are other factors at play.

In the same way that there has been a growing movement against racism in the form of Black Lives Matter, in parallel, there has been a growing movement for body positivity.

Society as a whole is becoming more inclusive in the West. On top of the fact that you’re not breaking any laws, you are not breaking any social contracts (anymore) either. You will not get in trouble for wearing a bikini as a 50 year old.

It’s all in the mind

Are you afraid of potentially committing a grave social faux pas? Do you dread the looks or comments people might make about you wearing a bikini? What if I told you that you’re worrying too much?

It was French Philosopher Michel de Montaigne that said: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” He said that 500 years ago, and it is still true to this day.

In a 2019 study, 29 participants were asked to write their worries down for 10 days. Then they were monitored for 30 days afterwards to see if their worry predictions would come true. After the 30 days, researchers found that 91.4% of worry predictions did not come true.

Now this is by no means a comprehensive study, but I think it gets the point across. We spend way too much time worrying about things that will never come to pass like fearing social judgment and it can restrict us from doing the things we want to do, like wearing a bikini despite being 50 years old or more.

Most people don’t care anyway

If you are experiencing this much insecurity about how you look, don’t you think others are feeling the same way? Everybody is too focused on how they look to care about how others look.

18-year old Lucy is too preoccupied with trying to look her best to impress the boys than she is with an older woman wearing a bikini. You are not competing with her for attention, so why would she care about you?

The younger folks are more interested in ogling each other, parents are too busy watching over their kids, and anybody else 50 and over is typically past the age of caring what others are wearing for a swimsuit.

As long as you’re not wearing some kind of bikini that would have stood out regardless of your age, such as a string bikini, nobody is going to bat an eye.

Should older women only wear modest swimsuits?

Should someone 50 years old or older be restricted to only wearing swimsuits that cover more skin such as tankinis, high-waisted bottoms, or one piece swimsuits? Heck no!

Wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with wearing the aforementioned swimwear, but there’s also nothing wrong with not wearing the aforementioned swimwear.

If you want to show off more skin by wearing a bikini, then by all means, go ahead!

What age should you stop wearing a bikini?

Again, there are no age limits to wearing a bikini. List any age you want and the answer is yes, you can wear a bikini at that age. Live life on your own terms. Life’s too short for you to worry about what others think. As long as you’re not breaking any laws or hurting anyone, just do what you want to do.

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