Stevi -- so sorry to hear about your freind...
Miss Hong Kong -- I can relate to THAT, as I spent a year in the thin-obsessed, quick-to-comment culture of Italy for 6 months. I won't go into the gory details surrounding my swimsuit search --ok, I will. I would go to the pool faithfully to swim every day, and after 3 months, my admittedly aging swimsuit began to feel a bit "airy" around my bum. Of course, the chlorine had eaten away the fibers, and I had a see-through spot from my waist down on my backside. SO, after going into 5 (count them, FIVE) actual sporting good stores in search of a suit, and being told in EVERY one that I was too big for their stock ("Signora, we have NOTHING in your enormous size" and "Signora, we won't let you try anything on as you are too big for our sports clothes" and "Signora, people of your size don't go to the pool because they are too big, so we don't have suits your size" -- note: at home I am a size 14) I had to take the matter into my own hands. I cut up a pair of underpants and hand-sewed them into my bathing suit. The extra cotton fabric DID slow me down in the pool, and I found out later that maybe I should have chosed a white pair instead of an old blue pair with huge pink flowers on it (which caused much alarm, fingerpointing, and general amusement by my fellow swimmers along the lines of "hey, look at the fat foreigner with pink flowers on her bum!" ), but what the hey...
CHIN UP!! You will be back in the land of the regular-size soon enough
