Does the Wall Street Journal do a swimsuit issue?

That was the first thought that came to mind when I picked up the Mint 'Lounge' section this morning. Because the cover feature 'Every Girl's Beach Basics' looked like it had escaped from the Elle magazine office and mistakenly taken refuge here.

So it is summer, and some of us will be on holiday or found in local pools. But even then, I would expect a business newspaper's lifestyle supplement to cover the subject more intelligently - and differently - from the fashion magazines. You know, the ones with 200 pages of ads, 100 va va voom pictures and 14 one paragraph articles to hold all that thick and glossy paper together.

My first question is: how many of the readers of Mint wish to 'make waves in the best of the season swimsuits'. And how many of us wish to 'get the look' using Ceramide Sun Beige and all that blah.

The basic issue with Indians and swimsuits is;
a) We don't have the bodies
b) And we don't have body confidence.

Now these are two different things. I was at a resort in Goa last month and there were a lot of Russians all over the place. Not all of them had perfect bodies but they were so comfortable in their own skin that you wouldn't really notice the flab.

But getting pack to the Mint spread, these pics of some gorgeous professional model lounging on a yacht do NOTHING for me. People like her... it's their job. What's more, the absurd prices of stuff I need to be a 'bonafide beach bum' left me feeling very poor and wretched indeed:

Reference pic above:
Lime Green swimsuit (La Perla) - Rs 12,000
Emerald satin shoes (Nine West) - Rs 4800
Giant stud cuff in black patent leather - Rs 10,145
Gold plated aviators (Mont Blanc) - Rs 23, 450

(And that's just 'one outfit')

But here is what REALLY took the cake. The black and white striped beach dress by Chanel for... Rs 50,000.

Tell me dear writers and editors @ Mint, would YOU ever pay up this kind of money for a beach dress? And if not, why are you recommending it to your readers??

I bet every single person on the Mint team would go buy a beach dress/ sarong from a Janpath or Colaba Causeway for Rs 150.

I bet you guys use Lakme, Lotus and Garnier sunscreen (or at best Banana Boat) - not Vichy costing Rs 1090.

I bet you guys would be terribly embarassed if you were asked to wear any of the swimsuits modelled on that yacht...

My point is, if I want to see pretty girls in bikinis and expensive aspirational products, I will buy that kind of magazine. This is not what I expect from 'Lounge' which is the first paper among the four which come to my home that I pick up on a Saturday.

And my final grouse: Don't men in India ever go for a swim? Because Mint has no advice for them at all. Or maybe they're all guys like the one in the Ceat tyres ad who hang around pools... hoping to click pics of bikini clad women.

P.S. Since we are on the subjects of swimsuits, here is something I wrote on the subject on this blog a couple of years ago: Tere mere beach mein