Shapewear

I was 36 and feeling perfectly fine about my post-baby body the first time a saleslady suggested I invest in Spanx.

“It’s not a girdle, it’s shapewear,” she said. “You know… for your… lumps and bumps.”

Or I could just keep wearing this comfy maxi dress from the maternity store, I thought, deciding there and then to take advantage of the relative privacy afforded by the dressing room to breastfeed my newborn before I left.

And no, I didn’t buy anything.

Up until then, I’d skated by with a relatively minimalist approach to grooming. I’d come of age in the nineties, when dressing up meant accessorizing your cargo pants and flannels with red lipstick and a choker. Voila! It’s date night!

Even when that era passed, I mostly stuck to layers and shoes I could walk in. I could even skip the lipstick, and dudes would continue to check me out. I could be donned head to toe in sweaty, faded, bleach-stained workout clothes, and my husband would still shower me with compliments, which I took as evidence that anything that went beyond washing, brushing, sunscreen, and a glance in the mirror was entirely optional. And anyway, I had better things to do, like soak in a tub or enjoy a long walk or drink cocktails or read poetry. 

Or work, of course. Sixty hours a week during the school year. Longer during debate season. I was young, ambitious, hellbent on changing the world as an urban teacher. 

And then I had kids, and the pretty-making business disappeared altogether. I chopped off my hair, shoved my dresses and heels to the back of the closet, and honed down my morning routine to 26 minutes, shower included. My students in first period never saw me with dry hair. More than once I delivered a 40-minute lecture with spinach between my teeth from the breakfast I’d scarfed in traffic. 

“Name one man who wakes up early to blow out his hair,” I’d bark whenever the critical bitch in my head suggested I take better care of my personal appearance. This didn’t shut her up, but at least it redirected her to attack other, more substantial flaws. My impatience. My righteousness. My temper. Most of all my exhaustion. Exhaustion so bad that it snowballed into insomnia, pneumonia, a pinched nerve, and, ultimately, resignation from teaching. 

So much for changing the world.

I grew out my hair, stopped timing my showers. I started writing, mostly in the mornings when my kids were in school. I took long walks in the forest preserve. And, of course, I spent a good chunk of time doing what everyone does these days: scrolling and streaming.

I want to say it was sometime around the pandemic when these mysterious videos began popping up on my feed: black elastic sucking up the sack-like cellulite that so often collects around women’s midriffs. There was something fascinating, if grotesque, about these videos, like strange porn or watching peroxide fizz over a wound. I have to admit, I lingered there whenever the ad appeared. I never bought the product, though. I wasn’t that much of a sucker.

Until a few months ago, when Juli and David invited my husband and me to join them for dinner at a fancy downtown restaurant.

David introduced us to Juli a few years ago, soon after she agreed to marry him. David is a great friend and a wonderful guy, but nobody can deny that Juli is an incredible catch—attractive, kind, personable, and wildly successful. She’s not just a doctor—she’s a Harvard-educated infectious disease specialist who spent the pandemic saving lives, all the while nursing a newborn. 

So, yeah, I was intimidated. 

I rifled through all my old dresses in the back of my closet, searching for an outfit to lend me some confidence. Nothing was right. And then, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. A disheveled 52-year-old squinted back at me.

It was time for a makeover.

I’d start with the hair. Washing it and drying it. Smoothing it out with a flat iron. I’d put on some makeup, too—that new stuff that brings out your cheekbones—highlighter? And mascara—the waterproof kind that wouldn’t rub off and make me look like a raccoon. I’d resurrect those black suede pumps from years ago. And I’d buy that wrap dress I’d seen online. In red. Nothing says “fabulous” like a red dress.

And yes, I’d also give in and buy some shapewear.

The contraption I settled on was a bodysuit with thigh-length shorts. Kind of like one of those garments that wrestlers wear only tighter, with two wings of a waist-cinching corset sewed into the sides like shutters on a hurricane-prone house. 

The bottom section was relatively straightforward to get into. Step in and hoist it up, rolls squishing inch by inch. Managing the chub-spillage was a little trickier around the hips and rib cage, but the casing eventually swallowed it up after a few minutes of dogged tugging. Next were the straps, thick ones that dug into the space between my shoulders and my clavicle, so short I feared I might injure a rotator cuff. 

Finally, it was time to tackle the ten hooks of the corset. This was the hardest part of all—hooking the top squished the already-packed chub down. Hooking the bottom squished it to the middle. Hooking the middle burst open the other sides.

Still, after twenty minutes or so, the chub was contained. I pulled on the red dress and turned to the mirror.

And damn, I looked pretty hot. Cartoonish, but hot—boobs like torpedoes, silhouette stiff, but decidedly lump-free.

I was just touching up my lipstick when my husband came in. “Red, good,” he said with a nod at my dress. “I’m wearing charcoal. That should work, right?” 

“Of course,” I said through my teeth, making a note to replace the sugar with salt in his next birthday cake. 

We were at Juli and David’s door a half-hour later. Juli flung it open. An apron was tied over her dress and there was flour in her hair. “So sorry I’m running late!” she called out. “I’ll be ready in a minute!”

“Mommy!” came the voice of her three-year-old. “Can I have a cookie?”

“Not now, honey,” Juli said, then ran upstairs to finish getting ready. We wandered into the kitchen to chat with David, who was tidying up, the counters cluttered with freshly-baked gingerbread men.

“Do you mind if I eat one?” I asked, tummy rumbling. I’d skipped lunch in anticipation of the big dinner.

“Sure!” he said. 

I took one. Then another. Then three more when nobody was looking. I stood up straighter, shapewear straps collapsing my shoulders into my core like a reverse rack. 

I snuck another two cookies just before Juli returned looking gorgeous in a simple black sheath and a silver filigree necklace. Turns out black can say “fabulous,” too, particularly if you accessorize it well. Still, she waved away my compliment. “This dress? I wear it to work!” she said, laughing.

“Well, damn, I wish I’d done that,” I said. 

And I did, too. What had I been thinking? That all I needed was highlighter and elastic to reclaim my lost youth? That a cheap red dress would fool anyone into mistaking me for an honest-to-goodness world-changer like Juli? 

Worse, I was beginning to feel nauseous. If only I had chosen a nice, roomy maxi dress, I wouldn’t even need this cursed shapewear. 

But alas, I didn’t have a maxi dress. And even if I had one, there was no time to change. 

The four of us piled into Juli and David’s minivan—men in front, women in back with the car seat and the toys and the snacks—and headed for the highway. 

The traffic was bumper-to-bumper. 

“Good thing we gave ourselves an hour!” David said, jerking the van into the left lane and slamming on the brake to avoid rear-ending the car in front.  

My stomach churned. 

Juli was asking me about my writing. Unfortunately, there was little news. Yes, I was still working on that book I started five years ago when I left teaching. No, I didn’t have a publishing deal. No, I hadn’t sent it off yet. No, it wasn’t ready to send. 

I changed the subject to her work, which, unlike mine, was changing constantly. I tried to imagine how exhausted she must be, working every day to protect her fellow citizens from infectious disease in a nation overwrought by conspiracy theories and science denial, all the while parenting a young child. And then, I thought back to my own return to work years earlier when my kids were little. Playdates and potty training and tantrums and lessons. All after ten plus hours of teaching and coaching. How exhausted I was. How I always felt like I was failing. 

The car lurched forward, then stopped abruptly. Forward, stop. Forward, stop. 

 A bitter bubble spiked with clove burbled into my mouth. 

“I think I might barf,” I blurted. I could barely get the words out. The shapewear, having contained all the chub, was squeezing bile from my gut like toothpaste from a tube.

Juli looked at me intently, her eyes appraising, objective. The eyes of a doctor. Then she rummaged among the loose toys and crumbs, finally extracting a plastic shopping bag. 

“Take this,” she said.

I took it.

Next, she fished out a small bottle of water.

“Drink this,” she said.

I drank it. 

“Would you like a cracker?” she asked, holding up a sleeve of saltines.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Let’s try breathing,” she said, and counted five as I inhaled, seven as I held my breath, and eight as I exhaled.

Five sets in, I still wasn’t feeling great. 

But at least I knew what I had to do.

“Do you happen to have a blanket?” I asked Juli.

Of course, she did.

I draped the blanket over my body from the neck down, securing it under my tucked chin to shield the view from the rear-view mirror. Then I reached under my dress and released one of those damn oppressive straps.

Instant relief.

I released the other strap. Then the corset hooks, one at a time, chub spilling out like chocolate from a lava cake. Next, I reached into the dress’ bodice, grasping the shapewear under the open corset, hoisting it down to the waist and over the hips. Finally, I allowed the blanket to fall across my lap so that I could tug from below, the cursed garment inching down my thighs, my knees, my calves, and finally my ankles, where it lay like a deflated balloon.

“What happened to that barf bag?” I asked, and I wadded up the Shapewear and thrust it in just as the minivan pulled up to the restaurant. 

“Shall we go?” asked Juli.

“Hell yeah,” I said, and I slid open the car door, lumpy, bumpy, and ready to take on a five-course meal.

-Kathryn O'Day

Kathryn O'Day is a former high school English teacher working on a memoir about her experiences in Chicago Public Schools. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Northwind Writing Award. Her work has been published in The Good Earth Review, Pangyrus, Another Chicago Magazine, Prose Online, Touchstone, and The Northwind Anthology. She also reads fiction submissions and conducts author interviews for TriQuarterly Magazine.