Shapewear, but What Shape?

Happy Mother’s Day to all the lovely Mums out there, I'm talking shapewear today! 

If you’re fortunate enough never to have had to squish yourself into one of these instruments of torture, Congrats! I have tried all brands, styles and colours and what's more shapes. I was wondering what ''shape'' they're supposed to create? Germans eat a lot of sausage and my expedition into shapewear in Germany led me to the conclusion that the ''in'' shape in German shapewear is ''the burst sausage'', plumptious with bits bursting out at both ends. Squash your middle in and out pops the squish at the top or you get rolls hanging out at the side, buy the whole body job and your boobs get squashed flat and little rolls of squish pop out under your arms. Try the dress style, your boobs get squished and you spend all evening trying to pull the dress down because it keeps rolling up and your afraid it’s going to roll up like a spare tyre around your waist (or what used to be a waist) and the rest of your  rolls slip out and hang down below! Super. Don’t even think about going to the loo, it ain't happening, by the time you get everything back squashed in and pulled into place the do is over or your dinner is cold.

I remember my first purchase of a flesh coloured, fat squashing piece of lingerie …… the saleswoman's tip was after the party run into the bathroom first and rip it off before my husband saw it or make sure to get undressed in the dark. Another saleswoman told me to always buy shapewear a couple of sizes larger, then you don’t get those rolls popping out, but wait, I thought that was the point? Everything getting heaved in.

If you are sitting at home, twenty something, thinking smugly, it won’t happen to me, you may be in for a surprise! I used to laugh at those matronly passion killers hanging in M&S, big bras, big knickers, flat Birkenstocks and lycra leggings and then comes the time ….. a revelation, it all makes sense!