It is a complex facet of human evolution, being friends with a man who has seen you naked.
But because we are developed, mature people, my former flame and I find ourselves walking his dogs one evening along a darkened beach road, neither one of us mentioning that, at several points during the course of our respective existences, we sucked the skin off of each other’s inner thighs.
What my former flame does mention as we walk through the deep blackness of a spring night, however, is his feelings on girdles.
Playful secret.
“Dude, if a chick I was hooking up with was wearing a girdle,” he laughs, shaking his head as though this is a distant possibility, “I’d be like, what are you doing? I’m going to see you naked. And even worse, it would probably be such a turn-off that I’d be like, Nah, forget it.”
A sudden and terrible silence sits between us, the unmistakable stillness of truth about to be exposed.
For I, Laura Watkins, have worn a girdle.
No, shapewear! Shapewear. Girdle sounds like such an awful contraption, something your great-grandmother sported that was fashioned out of airplane scrap metal and repurposed Army tents from the Korean conflict.
But I wasn’t just a shapewear-wearer – I was the fucking Morgan le Fay of control top panty hose; and there was more: I had used my gut-sucking magic the night I had finally become intimate with the very man I was now walking dogs with.
Because my brain is stupid—one time it convinced me it was okay to eat a pizza I’d left in the backseat of my car for two days in August—it decides to tell him so.
“You do realize that I was wearing one the first night we slept together?” I reveal, then brace for impact.
“Shut up,” he laughs, and shakes his head.
“I’m not even remotely joking.” I stop walking and look at him.
“No way.” He keeps walking. The dog trots along beside him.
“Why do you think I didn’t get undressed in front of you?” I argue, dizzy with a ferocity that can only stem from the manic dishonor of convincing a man you have tricked him into finding you attractive. “I got undressed in the bathroom, remember?”
He stops suddenly, and looks at me. In his face I can see the processing of memory, and that he is no longer on this street with me, but has, in this fraction of a second, retreated back to our first night together, and is lying in yellow cotton sheets spilled with bedside lamp light in my third-floor apartment.
I am standing in front of him, our lips parted in that hungry way when you know you’re going to make something your own somehow. Remembering we’re about to be naked, I look down at my dress, pick up a robe and nightgown draped over my desk chair, and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Bathroom,” I say, gripping the free-flowing-yet-bosom-
“You can get undressed in front of me,” he says softly, amused by what he thinks is my shyness.
I feel my palms—alright, my ass, which is encased in industrial-grade spandex—start to sweat.
Appearing in more bedrooms than any of us would like to admit.
“That’s definitely something that could happen potentially,” I nod. “No, that’s totally what we should absolutely do, is get undressed in front of each other, because that is what people do, and really there’s no reason we shouldn’t at all or anything like that. Ha, ha!” I add a small laugh to let him know that I for sure wasn’t wearing undergarments I could only get off with some needle nose pliers and half a bottle of Crisco. Before he can respond, I say, “
As I turn to the bathroom, I subtly kick his boxer shorts into a dark corner. That move will buy me a few seconds to stop him in case he decides to bolt.
Let me break down modern shapewear for you assholes who can put on polyester-spandex blend and not look like a balloon filled with mashed potatoes: no matter what size we are, many of us have fat distributed in a way that we might consider uneven—it’s like God, during our divine molding, squeezed us like fleshy stress balls, inflating fat pockets at random, and then said, “Uh, sure, that works,” and then dropped us on Earth so He could get started inspiring Kate Bush’s next conceptual album.
This is where shapewear comes in—it smoothes us out, no matter how the Lord squeezed us. And depending on body type, there are several coverage options when it comes to modification via undergarments.
Say you are shaped like a summer squash, and need to crush your thighs into a stunning retreat like the Bolsheviks at Warsaw—simply slide on a pair of mid-thigh shapers, which are basically super-control pantyhose without any legs, and are designed to keep your butt and thighs vacuum-packed through the obligatory photos you have to pose for at your cousin Whitney’s wedding reception. Yes, maybe it’ll be so tight around your legs that your brain will be deprived of oxygen, but it’s only temporary; and, considering Whitney’s marriage is of the shotgun variety to a man your family has only been introduced to as Big Mike, it’s probably best you not have full recall of the blessed, Wild Turkey-soaked occasion anyhow.
Sometimes, though, you need more support than even modified tights can offer. If your “problem area” is from your stomach up—such as rogue back fat that suggests to the otherwise ignorant masses that a colony of ferrets has taken shelter under your ensemble—you are often forced to break out the heavy artillery. This is where bathing suit-like shapewear comes in, and squeeeeeeeezes your torso into a smooth, shapely silhouette. It’s like a hug, if hugs made your tits sweat and brought into question the existence of a just and loving God.
But I will tell you this: for the (with any luck, maximum) five hours you have it on, shapewear makes your clothes look good. Smooth lines. Better fits. Not having to forgo your Friday night ritual of eating a vat of pudding while you watch episodes of Twin Peaks. It’s nothing short of a modern miracle.
But shapewear, as you may have guessed, has a dark side. If it didn’t, I would be busy seeing if I could hook up my vibrator to a car battery for added power instead of writing about my methodology for controlling excess thigh fat on the Internet.
The first problem with shapewear is this: getting it the hell off.
There’s no way elegant way to remove a device that is meant to hold in fat in front of another person—as soon as you manage to shimmy it off, your gut comes spilling out like the just-unsealed contents of a tube of Pillsbury crescent rolls—and now, with a hot dude in my bed waiting for me to disrobe so he can put his parts in my parts, it is the complication I am facing.
science!
Wiggling my gird—er, shapewear—off in quiet desperation, beads of sweat gathering on my forehead like I have just taken the stand at Nuremburg, the second and more complicated component of altering one’s body occurs to me: the shame of wearing one in the first place.
But why was I ashamed? I used a variety of tricks to heighten my attractiveness every day: high heels to appear taller; jewelry to stir a subconscious belief in others that my father is a chieftain offering a large dowry in exchange for my hand; or smearing foundation across my cheeks to mask the fact that up close, my face resembles a satellite photograph of Mercury.
Before I put on my nightie, I take my reflection in and consider my body, and why it is that I fear my nakedness is not good enough.
My arms jiggle. My thighs are creased. My breasts are too large (yes, I was concerned that a heterosexual American male would say, “Your boobies are too big to enjoy. Leave my sight. Speak of this to no one.”). I run a hand across my lower abdomen, the greatest offender. It’s puffy and soft.
In many cultures, I would be considered a beautiful, fertile woman. It wouldn’t even be far off to say I was considered that in our own culture, at least among crowds that like the shape of potentially childbearing women and big naturals porn. Yet I was trying to appear smaller, contort my parts into what I believed was a more sexually usable form.
And now I am afraid to leave the bathroom, terrified that the man in my bed will see me for what I am: a fake. Worse than that, a coward.
And at very, very worst, a glob of cookie dough someone was going to stick his dick in.
But as this is a real life and not a Faulkner story, I can’t leave him in my bed to decay. So I shut off the bathroom light.
I turn the bedroom knob.
When I enter the room, he sits up.
He looks me up and down.
Does he know now I am a massive ball of flesh? Is he afraid of being devoured by my stomach, pummeled by my back fat, swallowed alive by thighs? Doesn’t he realize I have a giant, monstrous vagina, swallowing entire panties whole like The Snatch that Ate Brooklyn?
Then he reaches for me.
Suddenly he is running a hand across my stomach, pulling me tightly, clutching my thighs, my breasts (which, to my surprise, weren’t too big for him?), my shoulders. He kisses me. I turn off the light.
We are here again in the darkness, the two of us. There is no girdle now. I am wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, drooping off my shoulder like a deflated flirtation.
A few moments pass before he throws an arm over me. “I love the taste of my foot in my mouth,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
“No, it’s not.”
“It is,” I tell him. “Because the important thing here is – “ I turn to him, “I got laid, son.”
He laughs, shakes his head, and leads the dogs along. For a moment, I follow behind him.
If he were to turn around, there would be a lot to consider: the glittering of porch lights through shaking leaves, glowing soft as bedside lamps in a third floor bedroom, and a woman there in the darkness, naked for all the world to see.
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