In ten days, I am going to attend an event that requires me to get dressed up. After a certain age and a number of kids, I don’t quite have the smoothest midsection. It’s a little too round and has a little extra skin with a few lumps and bumps thrown in for good measure. Maybe there was a time that these physical attributes were a sign of wealth, fertility, and beauty. As usual, I am living in the wrong time. Usually, I can hide it nicely under regular clothes. Dresses are a bit trickier though. Most dresses cling to the bumps and settle in the back creases. Awesome. Most women have invested some amount of money in shapewear. I currently have more than 20 shapewears in a dresser drawer. Some are too small. Not sure why I have those. Let’s face it, squishing all that fluff just pushes it up and over the top of the shapewear or down under the shapewear. If I could move it into my bust, that would be okay, but it usually doesn’t move quite that much. It just leaves a hefty muffin top and thigh bumps. I am not trying to make me slimmer, because that’s an entirely different issue. I just want to be smoother. I have some that go over my head, some that slide up over my legs, some that include the legs, some that stop like underwear (these are particularly bad for a person with adequate thighs because they cinch on the hips, creating a cliff at the top of the thighs…thigh cliff), and one that is just the midsection like a slimming back support. They all PROMISE that they don’t roll. They all lie! I have thrown out many shapewears at a formal event because it rolls. And once it rolls, there is no way to stop it from rolling, as if it finally figured out what it was supposed to be doing all along. If I wanted to put a tight band right in the middle of my fluff so I could look like the Michelin Man, I would have just cinched an exercise band around my midsection. At least that I could use for some mid-event upper body exercise when I go to the bathroom. They roll up…they roll down. They contort my fluff into an even less desirable concoction.

I fall for it over and over. There’s a little rubber at the top so it won’t roll down…hah! They all have that and they all roll. I am still considering buying one more. Maybe this is the one that won’t roll. This one tucks up under the bottom of my bra, so maybe my bra can hold it in place. Of course, it didn’t directly address the pee issue. If I have on a gown, and my underwear is under my bra, how do I pee? One of my other shapewear pieces had a pee hole. That’s fine if you have good aim. And if you don’t, you have wet underwear. Yuk! Also, what if you get all set to pee out the hole, squatting over the toilet in heels, holding open your underwear and hoping not to pee on it, with your dress bunched up under your armpits, and you discover that you need to do more. What then? I have to stop the flow, stretch my dress up to my bust, and shimmy down the shapewear for the second type of nature call? Hope that there’s time for that! Eating rich food with alcohol and dancing sometimes shakes you up like a corked champagne bottle. Or does the shapewear have a butt flap like a child’s onesie pajama? I’m sure that two buttons at the small of my back for the emergency butt flap will be very smoothing. Quite honestly, we’re lucky that there aren’t more bathroom emergencies at these events.

Maybe, just Maybe, I will embrace my lumps and bumps (do we call these curves now to make them sound flattering, like we want them?). Maybe, I wear a comfortable pair of underwear and avoid the bad bathroom scene. Maybe I’ll be the lumpy one chuckling as I hear someone wrestling in a stall as I dab on more lipstick. Maybe…or maybe I will wear a tux like Travis. That sounds good!