bodied •
You can’t claim to be body-positive AND wear Spanx
She can go back to her packaging
by Ari Bines
Supposedly, we're now living in a world in which you can be a size 16 and rock booty shorts and a crop top — and its a power move. Plus, I challenge you to scroll through a women's interest site and not see stories about fat chicks refusing to conform to fashion standards, including ours.
And that's all great. But the mere existence of things like shapewear, comprised of girdles and corsets and weird spandex tubing designed to totally change your body type, throws all of that progressive thinking way the fuck away.
Shapewear, you can have several seats.
Shapewear is uncomfortable (and that's putting it mildly)
The first time I was persuaded to try shapewear was while shopping for my high school graduation. My mom thought I should make my lumps and bumps scarce for the big day, so she recommended trying one of her pieces. Borrowing one of many Spanx my mom kept stocked in her dresser, it took me about 10 minutes just to get my calves through one leg.
The entire act of putting on shapewear is so strenuous, you're better off dipping out on your morning jog. No lie, a bitch be tired after aaalllllat. Additionally, anyone wearing shape wear is forced to spend all day finding new, innovative ways to pull out pieces of flesh-colored spandex shorts out of their ass. If you're being forced to wear those tighter-than-tight bikr shorts along with a pair of pumps to avoid fat-shaming eyeballs, you need to ask yourself: "Is this really progress?"
Owning shapewear is still about having 'the look'
Even though I'm what society and Hollywood would deem a "digestable fat girl" for audiences, it isn't lost on me that the purpose of shape wear is just to sculpt you into a bigger version of a slim thick Beyonce or a Kardashian. There are literally hundreds of stores that sell shapewear, and shapewear only.
What shape wear does for us curvy women is give us instant gratification of feeling like a skinny legend for a day. It acts as a form of temporary confidence, so we can look to the mirror and be motivated to acheive those more aspirational Instagram bodies. It's as if your natural figure, in its cute, fat and floppy state, isn't enough. Hmmph!
Overall, it obliterates the whole purpose of the body positivity movement
While body positivity is a movement to uplift marginalized bodies in media, we're still persuaded to aspire to a more ideal shape in our own plus-size stores. Any shopper who cares enough will take notice of retailer's strategic merchandising to see that shapewear is (almost always) placed by the register. It's called impulse buying, and you're the sucker who's probably already fallen for their devious plan.
Maybe you have a wedding to attend and you, out of everyone, were given specific instructions to not embarrass the bride because of that little extra meat hanging off your love handles. Perhaps that sounds extreme, but they are real scenarios that women experience because they aren't as smooth as sculptures.
I've stopped wearing shapewear for good. While it makes a person feel skinty on a moment's notice, once the day is over, reality sets in and you're back to you.
And if you can't cope with that, you've got a serious problem.
Related stories recommended by this writer:
● Is anyone else sick of dating shows only catering to very thin people?
● No, straight-sized women! Plus-size clothing should NOT cost more money