Bikini Battles On Planet Jello

NOTE BEFORE READING: The author apologizes for posting something she wrote seven years ago. What can I say? It's been that kind of a week...)


Salt Lake City can't understand why the world's media, in preparation for the 2002 Olympic games, has come, seen, and left with an impression of the city as being 'a little off' at best and 'back in the dark ages' on a good day. Salt Lakers are disappointed by the world's impression of them as 'conservative', and wonder where that impression came from.

Maybe they should read their own newspaper.

I've lived here before, so I shouldn't have been surprised by the story in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune, front page of the Utah section. If you're a local you know which article I'm talking about. It's the story which appears under the large color photo of the woman (who looks twenty-one) with long, wispy, flowing brown hair (that rivals the knock-out brunette's hair in the latest Physique shampoo commercial) gently blowing in a light breeze and she's poised on her front porch, arms lightly folded across a very flat stomach, serene smile on her face as she gazes off into the distance and from this description you'd think it's a picture of yet another happy Utah housewife looking off into the distance on a summer afternoon and wondering how much longer the dough needs to rise for tonight's dinner bread until I tell you that I left out a fairly important detail or two: The woman has a figure that would stop a clock. She might look twenty-one, but she's (you'll never in a million years guess this) forty, and she's wearing a bikini. A little one. I mean everything's covered, but covered in the way that you throw a tarp over a Porsche, you know the Porsche is under there. You can see the smooth lines of the body, sense the bright glow of the paint, even imagine what it looks like careening down an open road!

Which brings us back to the paper. All this imagining, I mean. This woman apparently had the unmitigated gall to undertake a risqué activity such as gardening, in the privacy of her own yard, in this outfit which covered everything. Granted, she was on her own (private) property. Granted, she wasn't playing loud music while she gardened, wasn't shouting at the top of her lungs or even singing off key. She wasn't disturbing the peace of a very hot afternoon at all. She wasn't, truth be told, doing anything but taking the sensible course around pulling a few weeds on a day where temperatures hovered somewhere around one hundred degrees. I'm sure this happens all the time out in California. Maybe even gets overlooked in the back woods of Idaho, or the remotest areas of Montana. But to be so bold in Utah? At the risk of sounding a bit like Paul Harvey, let's get to the rest of the story (although you might already have guessed how it comes out).

The problem wasn't really with the woman, it was with her neighbors. One of whom repeatedly drove by, snapped her picture (and doesn't photography while you're driving rank right up there with being just as reckless as yakking on your cell phone in traffic?), and hollered inappropriate suggestions to her out his car window. Which she ignored because let's face it, she was obviously smart enough to know that time spent gardening is time well spent, and time spent reasoning with an idiot may as well be deducted from your life and tossed directly into the garbage can. The rest of her neighbors were busy, too. Busy calling the local police force to complain about her lewd activities there in the privacy of her yard. Like bending down to pull weeds, I guess. Or maybe it was the sensuous bend of her wrist as she cranked on the water for the sprinkler, I don't know.

So the police arrived and read the woman the great state of Utah's lewdness statute or some such thing. This statute was conveniently reprinted in the newspaper so that I, and everyone else who read the article, could clearly see exactly what the police must have figured out once they finished reading it to her: That she wasn't in violation of a darned thing. Her suit covered what it was supposed to. She was actually wearing more, she pointed out (and I hope she managed to keep a straighter face when she did it than I was able to in reading about it), than the NBA's Utah Jazz dancers, and the Utah Bikini Team, wore when they performed in public. It wasn't even as if she was 'visually offensive,' she reminded them, and went on to point out that most people thought she was much, much younger than forty (Please count me in this group. It was all I could do, three years her junior, not to clip her picture, adhere it to the fridge with several Pepsi can magnets and scrawl "No More Twinkies Forever" across the front of it in vibrant green permanent marker).

Most stories have happy endings but here on planet Jell-O (yes, earlier this year the state legislature actually took the time to proclaim the green version the official state snack. So, you see? Our tax dollars really are working. Jiggling right along, This Is The Place for the odd and ridiculous. Today's paper carried a follow-up article (but no pictures this time) announcing that the woman's attire had been deemed appropriate and no charges had been filed. However, the police department had been deluged with phone calls since the woman's story hit the news, from people calling in to report other rampant instances of reckless gardening in bathing attire.

You'll have to pardon me if I find this whole thing ridiculous, but I'm clipping that story and adding it to what I call my "Only In Utah" file. This file grows at an alarming rate, but fortunately I found a file box that doubles nicely as an ottoman. I grew up, for the most part, in Berkeley, California. I don't think you could get arrested for gardening in your bikini in Berkeley (unless, of course, what you were growing was illegal). Actually, I don't think you could get arrested for doing much of anything in your bikini in Berkeley, and I'm pretty well convinced there are certain beaches, campgrounds and even a grocery store or two where any kind of clothing is completely optional. So pardon my broadmindedness (which I keep secured under a baseball cap most of the time so that I don't stand out too badly in this beautiful country with the very strange views on right and unforgivable) but we're talking about a woman in a bathing suit here, and that should never have been news.

It will be interesting to see what the world writes about Salt Lake City, once they've come for the games, lived among the natives for a bit, and gotten up close and personal to the local lifestyle. I hope they're kind, because it truly is a wonderful place to live. We're surrounded by beautiful country. The cost of living is a welcome change from the pressures of many other states, and while the crime rate is not Mayberry, R.F.D., a barking dog generally works as well as the most elaborate alarm set-up. It would be nice if the media came for the games and departed after deeming the place something other than 'conservative', the "C" word that makes so many cringe (even as they're running to the phone to report suspicious cleavage on their neighbor's back patio).

I'll keep a positive thought that it might just happen. But we could go a long way toward making it reality by keeping stories about women's gardening attire off the front pages of the Utah section (or any section) and in the editor's wastebasket, where they really belong.


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