It seems a lot of fuss over something that happens for only a couple of weeks per year, but it’s getting very close to the holiday period – and it seems a lot of us are dreading the moment we step onto the beach and let the towel drop.

A recent survey of 1,000 women revealed some very interesting statistics about how we view our bodies – and how we’d like other people to view them, if at all. The key findings include:

Only six percent of women will feel confident in a bikini this summer

…and nearly half of all women in the survey claimed that they would avoid wearing a bikini at all. What’s more, a whopping 45% of women polled claimed that wearing swimwear in public is more stressful than being naked in front of a new partner for the first time. And this is not only a female concern – in another survey, only 15% of men claimed they would feel confident taking their shirt off on the beach this summer.

The body part women hate to show off? The stomach area

...according to 54% of women polled. In second place? The thighs. Although 16% of women can’t pick out a single body part and hate everything about their bodies.

The older you get, the more body-comfortable you are

According to the survey, women in their fifties are three times less likely to obsess over their body shape than their twenty-something counterparts, with motherhood acting as a dividing line: almost half of the women polled claimed that they cared less about their appearance after having children.

Need help in the beach battle?

If you really need to tighten up before the holidays, there’s still time to lean on a little help from the experts. If you’ve had enough of saggy tummy issues, an abdominoplasty procedure – which tightens the stomach muscles and smooths out excess skin – can be arranged. If you’re of healthy weight, but you still have pockets of stubborn fat that diet and exercise are failing to shift, a liposuction procedure can really make a difference.