The Platonic soul hits the beach

We have finally left for the much awaited vacation to the beach. We've been preparing for this for a week, now: the husband, by typing up a 47-item "to-do" list, which he left on the dining room table in a file folder marked "Cape Cod"; and me, by washing every item in the house and buying for myself a new "beach/vacation" segment of my wardrobe. The shopping trip for that segment amounted to me snagging every black item near my size at Macy's, perhaps the only store left in the mall that does not have that depressing (recession-induced) final sale policy. Final sales don't work if you have a Moby'd baby attached to you: I can only eyeball things, since I am not going to unwrap 100 yards of material and a sleeping baby to see if something fits.

      But why all of the black, you ask? Am I one of those existentialists (think Sartre) who can turn any environment into a Parisian cafe? Nope. It's that extra 14 lbs left over from the devil-may-care attitude I adopted during my second trimester; black is a handy way of slimming down when you have neither the time nor energy to really exercise. So, here I am, heading to the beach with a black wardrobe.
      The thing is, the problem with the extra lbs is not so much that they exist (although, for health reasons, they must go), but that they matter to me: 'tis vanity that has me investing my husband's hard earned money in this wardrobe. So, really, what I can do, at the least, is put this whole appearance thing lower on my list of priorities. In fact, one of the "greats" offers a nice argument for doing so. Plato, in his dialogue Phaedo, describes us as immaterial souls trapped in material bodies. The more attached to our bodies we are, the more difficult it is for us at death (you can imagine how heaven, hell and purgatory eventually fit nicely into this system). So, adopting an eternal perspective, or at least a Platonic one, this vanity is ultimately bad for me. God forbid I become like that vain soul in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce who couldn't cope with the loss of her material body.
      Alas, even Plato admits that this perspective can take a lifetime to gain, so in the meantime, it's off to the beach in my new, black, skirted bathing suit.