I Was a Latter-day Towanda, Trapped in My Wetsuit

By Melanie P. Moore

Attempting to assert my personal power over both the weather and my schedule, I found myself embodying “Towanda” from the Fried Green Tomatoes movie. Not the powerful Amazon-woman alter ego of the dynamic character Idgie. No, I was full-on Evelyn Couch, the subservient character played by Kathy Bates. Evelyn, who is inspired by stories of Idgie’s moxie, is emboldened to stand up for herself and barrels ahead with acts of personal power over societal limitations in ways that are shocking to her oblivious husband and hilarious to the audience.

It was early December and as I approached my sixtieth birthday, I was hell-bent on keeping to a self-imposed goal of going to swim practice four days a week. (I should clarify here that although I swim on a USMS team coached by a two-time Olympic medalist, I swim in the “not as fast” lane—we don’t say “slow.”) Time got away from me and I missed practice. It was a cool day for Central Texas (low to mid 60s) and the sun was playing hide and seek. Our pool temperature showed 61 degrees. In my brain that didn’t seem too far from the 78 degrees we swim in at UT. Math is not my strong suit—I took Math Appreciation in college instead of actual math. But I digress.

Over the weekend we had watched the Apple+ film The Last of the Sea Women about the Haenyeo of South Korea. These women, most of whom are now in their 70s and 80s, are part of a generational tradition of women divers who, even in the patriarchal society of South Korea, are the breadwinners of their families and have social standing and financial power as a result.

The Haenyeo free dive from the small island of Jeju off the Southern coast of South Korea. That is, they put on wetsuits and masks—no scuba tanks—and dive deep to harvest sea urchin, octopus, and other food from the ocean which they take to market and sell.

Trained from the time they are girls, these women are deeply connected to their bodies—how their bodies work and respond to the cold-water conditions, the rigorous diving, and handling sharp knives for harvesting. They train their minds as well. They know the ocean—how the tides affect their work, the habits and habitats of the sea life they are harvesting, and the negative effects of pollution and global warming. They selectively pull from the ecosystem to keep it healthy for coming years. They’ve been called the gardeners of the ocean.

In the film, we see them laughing and helping each other on and off with their wetsuits. They ride together to the sea, board a boat to take them to their fishing area, and then jump in to start work. Each has a net, which by the end of the day is heavy with all they’ve collected. They help each other carry the nets from the boat. Their work is individual and interdependent, their expertise the result of a lifetime.

Watching the film, I was embolded by these women, by their strength, tenacity, and physical prowess.

Enter Towanda of Austin on this cold winter day. I put on a wetsuit, donned my cap and goggles, and sat on the edge of our pool with my legs dangling into the water. I dipped in waist-deep and pulled myself right back out. Not thinking that I might be overtaxing my shoulders, I repeated this until I had the courage to let go and submerge myself. The water was COLD! I dropped down, pushed off the wall and felt the shock of cold water shooting down my back. It’s okay, I told myself, this is how wetsuits work. The water inside warms up and becomes an insulator for your body. I had read this, having never actually worn a wetsuit. At the other end of the pool, when I pushed off, cold water again shot down my back. After three turns, I stopped pushing off. Instead, I stopped, stood up, turned myself around slowly, then laid myself down on top of the water to start swimming again. This effectively kept the cold water outside the wetsuit.

Still, I was not prepared for how cold the water would feel on my face—like driving a motorcycle in cold weather without a face shield. I gave up on doing any kind of actual workout and just swam. With breaststroke I didn’t realize the buoyancy of the wetsuit would have my rear end so high in the water it felt like swimming in a downward dog pose.

It was the fastest 1,000 yards I ever swam. My fingers and toes were white with Raynaud’s. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel cold when I got out, at least not any colder than I already was. I went upstairs to take a hot shower. Standing in the bathroom, cold water pooling (and pooling and pooling) around my feet as it poured out of my wetsuit, I unzipped the wetsuit and pulled one shoulder off. Or tried to. The neoprene was tight and unforgiving. I wrestled the shoulder off, turned to the other shoulder and when I pulled it, the first shoulder popped back on. Watching myself in the mirror, I tried again to no avail. Starting to panic, I took deep breaths to calm down. I was trapped in a cold, wet, neoprene straight jacket. I had visions of my wife coming home six or seven hours later to find me still standing in the wetsuit—probably with water and urine pooled around me by then. Also, it was her brand-new wetsuit, which meant I couldn’t cut myself out of it.

Hours later, okay 45 minutes that seemed like hours, I had pulled the wetsuit every angle I could find and was still stuck. In one last effort, violently wriggling my shoulders and stretching my neck to one side, I finally achieved enough purchase on one sleeve to move the wetsuit slightly and it didn’t snap back into place. Pulling and wriggling I eventually got it off.

Evelyn Couch, embodying Towanda in the film, sledgehammered a room to create space for herself, started selling Mary Kay cosmetics to earn her own money, and rammed her car into a rude teenager’s car after the teen swerved into an open parking spot ahead of her and said, “…I’m older and have more insurance!” She was liberating herself from the tiny box society shoves older women into.

I, on the other hand, had liberated myself from a wetsuit. The next morning, I could not turn my head to the left. The wetsuit injury lasted nearly two weeks before I again had full range of motion; at swim practice I could only breathe to one side. So much for not interrupting my training plan by missing one practice that cold day.