Togs, togs, everywhere and not a pair I want to wear. 

A few years ago, during another round of Cranium, my dad announced that as he only had a certain number of “good summers left”, he would not be spending them playing board games with his family. He has no way of knowing how many good summers he has left, but as someone who lacks the right temperament for board games, I respect his stance.

We all have a finite number of summers left, and my greatest wish for mine is to find just one pair of togs that meet what was, until this year, two pretty simple criteria:

• Bum cover
• The creation of a distinction between where my breasts end and my back starts

From the end of October, every second ad in my Instagram feed is for companies with names like SwimCupBahaBoomBoom, featuring carousels full of people on holiday wearing swimwear of all kinds. They all look so happy to be participating in the swimwear industrial complex, which is booming.

Like a person emerging from a cave after 30 years of living with wolves, I am confused by this state of things. Until my thirties, I only owned one swimsuit at any given time. Shopping for them, no matter how I felt about my body, was always a hideous, sweaty and badly lit experience, and before online shopping, had to be done in person in horrible changing rooms. When I told others about my single pair of togs, they responded in disbelief, “Surely two, one for swimming in chlorine pools and one for outside water”. Unbelievably, like the feral wolf-woman I am, I just wore the same pair everywhere. I only branched out into having two pairs when I started swimming laps at indoor pools regularly.

Swimwear boomed in the 2010s, bounced again after the pandemic when we could travel, and it has not settled down. Statistica reports that the Sports & Swimwear market worldwide generated a revenue of US$97.32bn in 2024. Swimwear is relatively cheap to make, especially if you’re already in the sportswear or lingerie business, and because it’s lightweight, it’s very cheap to ship.

Ironically, it’s also one of the worst items to try and buy online. That seems to have had a generative effect, spawning thousands of businesses attempting to respond to data and consumer demand, which in turn begets more consumer demand and more data. The more people in perfect swimwear you see, the more you believe the perfect pair for you is just 17 hours of scrolling and searching away.

Instagramming your holiday has also surpassed homeostasis in the hierarchy of human needs.

In 2019, the founder of Andie Swim, Melanie Travis, told Vox, “A lot of places people go are sunny, water-based vacations. It follows, then, that you’re buying more swimsuits to go on these vacations. Since you’re Instagramming it every day, you need to be wearing a different swimsuit. The number of swimsuits that women are buying, generally, is going up.”

Social media, e-commerce and performative vacationing have created the perfect cauldron of events for the swimwear boom, and yet, with each passing ad and option, I feel more alienated. The offerings seem increasingly wild and complicated, involving straps, ties and cutouts. One swimwear company whose ad frequency setting is dialled up to 11 keeps trying to sell me an innovative multi-piece contraption that can be mixed and matched. It reminds me of the iconic Day to Night Barbie of the 80s — a shimmering ideal but too much faff.

As Gabi Lardies has correctly observed, it has become increasingly difficult to find bikini bottoms that aren’t thongs.

It gives me no pleasure to bring you this news, but after seeing hundreds of ads for swimwear on Instagram, I have two new observations about togs that necessitate adding more criteria to my list. Togs must: 

• Contain my labia, both minora and majora
• Prevent the sun’s rays from burning my nipples or any part of me previously covered by simply wearing togs

I am happy for anyone happy to twist themselves in some string, call it done and feel stunning, but I just want to walk out of the water without my labia winking at people. 

I want to pull a pair of togs up and dive beneath the waves without worrying about an escaped tit when surfacing. I don’t even have that many breast-related requirements for togs. I don’t mind if I have a monoboob. I don’t care if they don’t look perky. I am fine with them merging with my armpit when I lie down. I need enough fabric to cover and reasonably secure them and for that fabric to create a solid border between my breasts and my back when standing or sitting.

I also want to float in a starfish shape on top of the water and do it in one pair of togs that covers the bits of my body that are too lily white and delicate to see the sun. Tanning is back thanks to TikTok, and while tan lines are apparently a badge of honour, you can now buy togs that the sun shines through.

I hopefully ordered a pair of togs recently that looked like they fit my simple brief. Trying them on at home, they met three of my criteria but failed the land-based version of the wave diving test, the jump test. Providing further proof to my theory that my phone hears everything; the thumps and flopping sounds were relayed back to every “fuller busted” swimwear company in the land, and now one of my precious and finite summers is being spent bombarded with algorithmic remainders that my body belongs in a special category. One that apparently requires $300 worth of industrial steel and the same fabric used to construct racing yacht sails.

For now, I am returning to the cave. Hungry like a wolf, I wait for just a simple pair of togs. Please, send help.