Spanx: Empowerment or Torture?

If Alberto Gonzalez had really wanted to get valuable intelligence from purported terrorists via torture, he needn't have gone so far down the slippery slope toward violating human rights on a more disturbing scale than a Zimbabwean dictator. He could have just shipped a huge supply of Spanx to the CIA and said, "Only women can stand these things; therefore, they must be unmentionably horrific, like secretarial work and nursing."

 

 There I was, already broken down and ready to confess to anything, ANYTHING, to get me out of the hands of the women molesting me with bra fittings and forced mirror-staring,  when the Spanx rep came in. "Oh yes," my manager gushed, "you have to try on all of them, too. You are gonna love these." 

In came a parade of grinning women (were they grins of cheer or of delight in my pain? I'll never know), handing me power panties, power bike shorts, a power onesie with (no joke) a slit in the crotch you are somehow supposed to pee through--because there's no way you can get these things up and down your body in under twenty minutes--, power camisoles, power slips, power bras, and power tummy tube tops. 

They brought me the flesh-colored pieces instead of the black. I will never forgive them for that. I was wearing black underwear, which showed creepily through the flesh-toned power torture devices, as did every awkwardly compressed bulge of my post-breakup weight gain. My rib cage was forced to contract to a degree that didn't allow me to breathe normally, and I began to feel lightheaded. "Yes, yes, it was me," I wanted to shout. "I planned the attack on the Pentagon singlehandedly." I hoped confession would let me go to a nice warm safe prison, or get me a swift execution; in either case, I'd be free of having to pretend I was comfortable with myriad women checking me out in my power panties. 

All this, dear followers, for nine bucks an hour--I wasn't on commission yet. This may be one of the saddest stories the economic collapse has yet produced. It was even worse than whoring, and vastly less lucrative.