Photo Courtesy of www.spanx.com
Why is it that models of slimming undergarments like Spanx (left) are never the ones who would benefit from wearing them? It’s the body image parallel to the rich getting richer, and it makes the rest of us grumpy.
Not that it stopped me from buying a pair. My husband and I are are going to the inauguration and to a ball, and naturally I expect all eyes to be on ME, because I am so important. It’s my big day (Obama who?) and so I am pulling out all the stops.
There are numerous styles of Spanx, I discovered, each specifically designed to smush a part of your body into something resembling an attractive, roll-free, un-lumpy idealized feminine form. I am told by Spanx veterans that in order for them to be maximally effective, they must be somewhat uncomfortable. Not foot-binding excruciating, or Scarlett O’Hara corset-stay constricting, but what I would imagine a penis feels like in a condom. I wound up getting a pair that look like the early ’90s bike shorts the Fly Girls on In Living Color used to wear, fused to a tube top that ends just below one’s boobs. It has a hole in the crotch, for freedom of vaginal pursuits. The best part is the name of the Spanx line, Slim Cognito. It makes me feel like a average-sized, postpartum, yet glamorous Bond girl.
Still, I fear if the intelligence that I’m going to the inauguration Slim Cognito gets into the wrong hands it could set off a chain of unfortunate events, embarrassing the President-elect. Because the truth is, I am attending an offical function disguised as a thin woman. When the Secret Service learns that I am of merely normal weight (which they may, because as I’ve said, I am a highly visible figure inside the Beltway) they may suspect that I am not on the up and up about other matters. The Secret Service will look into it and discover my grandfather (an anarchist) had an FBI file as thick as Vogue’s September 2007 issue, the one with Sienna Miller on the cover. At which time, a big crew-cutted, square-jawed former DKE brother with an earpiece will wrestle me to the ground, then toss me out like the threat to national security he has determined I am.
From then on I will have a Secret Service code name: Skinny Bitch. My career in Washington will be over, but I will be happy because they called me skinny.
Meanwhile, has anyone noticed what a stone FOX Nancy Pelosi is?
I just saw her on CNN, and whatever you think of her politics, she’s lookin’ good. Notice how I didn’t add “for her age” or “for a grandmother” or “especially considering she’s a the first female House Speaker and that must come with a lot of stress which, in the case of most women, would be showing on her face.” She plain looks good, sans qualification.
Photos by: Wikipedia and Mari & Nacho, CC Licensed
If Christy Turlington (on the left, donating her supermodel fabulousness to the issue of maternal health) plays her cards right and takes care of her skin, she’ll wind up looking as good as Nancy Pelosi when she’s 69ish.
I, personally, have never seen them in the same room together? Coincidence? I think not.
January 12, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I have to totally agree with you on the Spanx – to phrase it in Bronx Science terms, Spanx follow the First Law of Thermodynamics – matter can neither be created nor destroyed. That is, the flab that is compressed somewhere is going to pop out somewhere else!
January 13, 2009 at 12:59 am
I didn’t know that your Spanx trial would be for such an “official” occasion. So I hope that there is no roll down occurence that keeps you from keeping that code name.
January 13, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I wore an Under Armour compression t-shirt to an interview. By midway through it had rolled up to my nipples. I did not get the job.