The author tries on a favorite dress from her youth but can no longer fit into it due to weight gain in her 50s. She recalls that her mother would wear control undergarments called girdles to manage her figure. After intense dieting and exercise fails to make the dress fit, the author remembers her mother's girdle "dance" routine. She purchases modern control shapewear and, like her mother, is able to shimmy into it and smoothly fit into the dress. The author realizes she can achieve her desired silhouette through spandex rather than sit-ups, just as her mother did.

1. As originally published in Chicken Soup to Inspire a Woman’s Soul 2004
I NEVER SAW MY MOTHER DO A SIT-UP
By EllynAnne Geisel
The dress was a full-length sheath the color of sweetened condensed milk, its
simplicity the perfect canvas for the hemline’s garden of hand-painted flowers. Wearing
it, I was a fashion success, and I basked in the symphony of compliments the dress
garnered.
But fitting into the dress year after year was difficult, for although shapeless by
design, I had to stay in shape to wear it. Despite daily exercise, sometime between
birthdays 51 and 52, my metabolism slipped into a coma and my svelte figure, along with
my derriere, disappeared. Although I’d noticed my pants were snug at the waist and
baggy in back, it was my husband who questioned the geographic relocation of my rear.
“Where’d your butt go?” was his eloquent query.
To reveal my buttocks’ travel plan, I tried on the dress. With my head and arms
through the appropriate openings, the barometer by which I judged weight gain followed
gravity and flowed southward. But unlike in previous migrations, the dress stopped its
journey midway. Gently tugging on one side, then the other, I eased the fabric down my
hips and over my thighs. Then I looked in the closet mirror. From waist to knees, the
dress clung to what appeared to be a lunar landscape made of dough. I’d found my butt.
Determined to wear the dress to an upcoming family celebration, I immediately
began starving and sweating calories.
For several weeks, I worked-out with a variety of video partners and a thigh
gizmo (the purchase about which I was so embarrassed, I’d set the box and its packaging
in the alley by a neighbor’s trash can). I nibbled foods consistent with the rodent culture,
and sticking my nose in the Oreo package, sniffed dessert. I was miserable but
determined to fit into that dress.

2. It was during a crunch session with Miss Abs of Steel that I suddenly recalled I’d
never seen my mother do a sit up. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had side rolls and a tummy
bulge. My mother had managed her flab by wearing a girdle.
I remembered sitting cross-legged on my parents’ quilted bedspread and watching
as Mama prepared for a special evening out with Daddy. Stepping into her All-in-One,
she’d grip the sides and pull upward, while at the same time doing the most wonderful
dance…a performance that involved much shimmying and shoving and squishing and
shaking until everything loose between her knees and armpits was encased in latex. With
her firmly curvy, hourglass figure, she’d looked like Sophia Loren. Sophia Loren
Grabbing the dress, I’d headed to the mall, where I soon learned that yesterday’s
girdle is today’s control undergarment. With names like Thigh Trimmer, Minimizer,
Smoothie, Belly Buster, Body Reformer, Invisible Shaper, Nip, Tuck & Boost, Inches
Slimmer, and Slim-O-Matic, it wasn’t difficult to envision their purpose – a quick lump-
and-bump fix.
I tried on the shape-wear and like my mother, I danced my looseness into the
slimming casing of each. When 100% schmushed, I slipped on the dress and watched in
the dressing room mirror as it glided over a spandex highway and journeyed to my ankles
like rich maple syrup dripping down a stack of pancakes. Preening, I appraised my
silhouette, now a smooth and slinky curve. For the price of $27.00, the lunar landscape
was gone, and I’d reincarnated the figure of my inner babe, who in the dim dressing room
surprisingly resembled Sophia Loren.
I don’t dress my inner babe every day, but when fitting her into a pretty dress
means “lifting the fallen,” it’s spandex, not sit-ups I now turn to.
I am, after all, my mother’s daughter.
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©EllynAnne Geisel 2002