Wearing Lycra for 40 days seems like a weird idea, I guess. The idea came to me because of all the time I spent on a bike, as a tour guide, the three years leading up to 2020 when I moved to the Netherlands to do my Master’s degree. I spend the biggest part of three years wearing my cycling lycra. It was weird when I started cycling, I hated how it clung to my body and showed off every flaw, but after 8 years of cycling, lycra is second nature. Lycra is your second skin. When I don my lycra I am filled with a sense of adventure. Honestly, now, there are some days when I preferred wearing lycra to clothes. I know when I wear the outfit that friends and the outdoors are not too far off. It means fresh air and adventures. Lycra evokes memories of Japan. I’m still making sense of the Netherlands. What will happen here if I wear the lycra? Will my experience be the same?
I’m not only wearing lycra because I’m a cyclist. I’m also wearing it because I want to explore the fetish culture. Some people enjoy the feel of artificial textiles on their bodies. Some people like to be bonded and constricted like that. I don’t, I like to move!
It’s more like wearing pyjamas than anything sexy. The hardest thing to do in it is pee. And that’s been my experience with all lycra I’ve worn. Bicycle bib shorts are optimized for anti-chaffing. Somehow that cannot be reconciled with easy peeing.
Any case. I don’t think it will be too hard to do this. I’ll add a positive spin to it as well. Body positivity. Wrap my ageing body in pink lycra. So people can see my bulges. And I look naked.
The naked part is appealing to me. I like being naked. Wish I could do that more in public, without getting in trouble. Pink lycra will have to do then.
The first day I wear my lycra is when I am travelling back from Luxembourg after visiting a friend. I wonder if the Luxembourgians are as tolerant as the Dutch for weird things like this? Wonder what they will think if I am on the train. Most of the journey back is through Germany. Luckily I don’t understand German, so the snide comments will fall on death ears.
The Germans look unfazed, every time I present my ticket to them on the train (like 15 times in 5 hours. They are more diligent than anyone else! The Belgians on the journey here didn’t check once!).
Most of what I remember about that trip is running to catch a train, falling down the stairs, hurting my knee pretty badly and losing my Apple Pencil. The freggin overpriced thing cost more to replace than my train fare to Luxembourg and back L.
