I used to struggle with my body. I tried to make it thin, and it fought back. Now, I struggle with my mind, trying to convince it not just to surrender but to renounce the battle.

My body is fine just the way it is, I tell myself. It always was. The real problem was the fatphobia that convinced me to trade my time, energy and ambition for carb-counting, hunger and self-loathing. (My mind doesn’t believe me. Why should it, after all these years?)

Both struggles feel futile. Losing weight is a battle I can win, but a war I will absolutely lose. Likewise, even backed by brave comrades and armed with ample ammunition, I don’t expect to defeat my lifelong dissatisfaction with my body — not while opposing forces try to sell me off-brand Ozempic and laud the new “Bridgerton” star’s “bravery” for not being a size two.

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It’s exhausting, this fight. But I know one way to take a break. One place I can go to stop feeling bad about not having the “right” body — and to stop feeling guilty about feeling bad.

The beach.

Yeah, I know: Going to the beach is exactly what we’ve been told we can’t do unless our bodies meet certain specifications. “Beach-ready,” adj., in popular parlance, does not mean being in dire need of a vacation, sporting a thick layer of sunscreen and possessed of a day’s worth of canned cocktails. It describes “someone’s body when they have been preparing it to look good on the beach, especially by exercising or eating less.”

Instagram posts insist from the first hints of spring that it’s time to get your beach body back, for which purpose there is, luckily, a system of online workouts called “Beachbody” and gym instructors who warn about the approach of swimsuit season as though it were shark season. “Just three months left,” my Pilates teacher informed us, in March, assuming no doubt that fear would deepen our plié squats.

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What’s so scary about swimsuit season? Is a swimsuit not simply a lightweight article of clothing that dries quickly and allows you to move freely?

No, I’m afraid, it is not. It’s a featured event in beauty pageants and the subject of its own annual magazine. It’s why people watched “Baywatch,” why they watch “Love Island,” and — just maybe — why they watch women’s beach volleyball.

To consume American culture about the summer is to swim in the notion that if your job is “beach,” your abs come in six-packs. Even aging........

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