Control Top Underpants

Abstract

I am well aware that I am fat. I am reminded when I go into a restaurant, and ask for the dessert menu at the end of the meal, and the waiter wordlessly raises his eyebrows. I am reminded when I go to a gynaecologist and see, even from my vantage point, that he presses hard on his pad, writing down OBESE in capital letters, underlining it angrily three times with his gold fountain pen. I am reminded when I go swimming at the beach, and I overhear a mother telling her slightly chubby pre-teen daughter, who is pleading for an ice cream, ‘You don’t want to end up looking like that do you?’ And I am reminded when I need something as simple as a pair of underpants. The fat people’s section of the lingerie department is always tucked away behind the alluring lacy bras and knickers resembling dental floss, secreted away in a little shame corner defined by full briefs, sensible cottons and acres of white and beige. The tags on the drab matronly bras and pants don’t echo the playful sexiness promised by the ‘standard’ sized lingerie. Especially when it comes to the perplexing Lycra wall of hell that features the ‘support garment’. Here, the sales tags foreground the possibility of ‘control’, ‘shape’ and ‘definition’ – all the characteristics fat women are supposed to lack. Venturing into the Lycra hall of shame folds my comportment into a ball, like a startled echidna. Disturbing and confusing offerings, less undergarments than contraptions, fittingly hang from racks. Wide waist bands of elastic capable of withstanding a nuclear blast, cruel pants that rise to just under one’s breasts, and extend to one’s knees, sausage casings, toothpaste squeezed.