How to Be Bikini Ready in No Time. Guaranteed.

Memorial Day and the unofficial kickoff to summer are four weeks from today. Which means every magazine and online advertising property geared toward women is running some near-hysterics version of OMG ARE YOU READY TO INFLICT YOUR BIKINI CLAD BOD ON AN UNSUSPECTING POPULATION?

That’s how marketing works. It creates the need in your mind, and then rushes to help you fill it. With juice cleanses, and bootcamps, and slimming panels, and magazine articles.

Lately, I’ve been seeing more sensible women posting a two-step program to a bikini body. It goes like this:

Step One. Buy a bikini.

Step Two. Put it on your body.

I like and applaud that approach, but it’s still not addressing the real problem, which is: people want to feel unself-conscious in a bathing suit (bikini or no). They want to feel that they will not be judged.

Here’s the thing.

Everybody gets judged in a bathing suit.

You get judged for being too heavy. Too skinny. Too old for the style you’re wearing. For being so lame as to wear whatever the hot style is right now. For not having style, period.

People will judge if you’re wearing a bathing suit clearly meant to hide as much of your body as possibly. They’ll also judge you if they suspect that you’re actually proud of your body, and accuse you of trying to flaunt it.

Here’s my one step program to get you bikini ready by Memorial Day:

Stop caring what other people think. Your body is none of their damn business.

The truth is, the vast majority of people will not judge. They’re too busy posturing for other people, or playing with their kids, or enjoying the sunshine, or worrying about how they look in their own bathing suits.

Some will think snide things, sure. But much like how your body is none of their business, the kneejerk reactions that occur in their brains are really none of yours.

Let it go.

Very rarely, some jerk might actually go so far as to voice that kneejerk thought out loud. This is a reflection on them and their poor manners, not on you, and here’s what I want it to mean to you. I want you to hear it and think, wow. Your opinion means jack to me. I don’t even know you, dude.

I want you to laugh delightedly. And I want you to say, THANK YOU, with a slight lilt of surprise, as if they had just complimented a new haircut that you secretly love or a pair of awesome shoes that make you walk the goddess walk.

Because they have just driven home to you the reminder that your opinion of your body is what matters.

Then turn and walk away and go on with your life. Let it go.

Practice it in a mirror. Imagine it in your mind. (Actually getting to use it is like the best feeling ever. I’ve been there.)

It leaves the ill-mannered buffoon in question confused, feeling as if they’ve said something wrong (which clearly, they have).

VERY rarely, you’ll get a guy who pulls it together in time and manages to hurl a followup at your back. Throw him a smile over your shoulder, if you feel like it. All he’s done is let everyone else within earshot know what an ass he is and what a poor job his parents did raising him.

Worrying about how others perceive your personal appearance gives them power over you they do not deserve. That they have not earned.

(Worrying about your health is a different story. That’s between you and you, and you know it.)

So go ahead and rock that bathing suit. Or don’t; that’s fine too. Again, the bathing suit is just something we’re marketed; unless you’re planning to go for an epic swim for time, something else would work just as well. Wear a sundress, if you really want. Whatever makes you feel comfortable and good. Whatever won’t get in your way so you can have a good time. Wear it with confidence and a smile, the best accessories a girl can have. (Fun shoes are nice too though.)

It might take some practice, getting used to the idea that your perception of your own beauty is what matters. Luckily, you’ve got four weeks to get it down pat.

Don’t measure your worth, your happiness, your attractiveness, your confidence, your self-discipline, your anything by how you look in a two-piece. Seriously, when you stop to think about it, how dumb is that anyway? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

And for god’s sake stop clicking on bikini-ready ab workouts and buying magazines that scream “Lose 10 pounds by Memorial Day.”

Stop feeding the marketing machine and maybe we won’t have to go through this nonsense next year.

Maybe, if they never see us worrying about it, our daughters won’t have to go through it at all.