Jiggly: Shapewear Then and Now – Lab 080

Listen. We are in the heyday of the bodysuit, of the velcro wrap around the waist, and I feel like it's snuck up on us.

Yes, it feels like everything and everyone wants to be shaped inside of their clothes.

You know who is my favorite person that talks about shapewear? Who? Well, they make my favorite shapewear ads and they're like, I'm trying to be shaped like a Coca Cola bottle. Alonzo Arnold. Ah.

I love Alonzo Arnold. They are giving you looks and they are giving you comedy, so I love it. But just like you said, Alonzo Arnold is going to put on that shapewear hon knee.

And Alonzo isn't the only one. A lot of people are. And it really makes us think like has this always been going on, just in different forms, and now it's acceptable. I feel like we're one step away from the sports rap outside the shirt. This really started with the slippery slope with the compression sock. It all goes back to.

That I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify.

This is Dope Labs.

Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dose of friendship. The semester is winding down and we want to have a really special semester finale featuring all of you. So make sure you give us a call and let us know your favorite episode from this semester. Yes, call us to zero two five six seven seven zero two eight, or if you're shy with your voice, email as at contact at Dope lapspodcast dot com.

This week, we're talking all about shapewear specifically. We really wanted to know more about where it all started, what it's made of, and the social impacts on the people that wear it.

Let's get into the recitation. What do we know?

Well, we know that shapewear is everywhere. It feels like it's in everything. I just bought a pair of pants, just regular black pants, and there was like some shapewear at the top. It was really tight at the top and I wasn't even expecting it. So now it's being incorporated into just regular apparel.

You know. I feel like when the Spanks Lady really made it big. Oh yeah, I knew every celebrity was going to have their shapewear aligned shapewear and like body sculpting all those. Yeah, but underwear and undergarments, it's a huge.

Thing, absolutely, and we know that people use different types of different things.

They have the compression stuff in the gut and they letting it loose in the butt.

Okay, I have seen that. I've seen it for myself. I've seen it with my own eyes.

And you know, a thing I know you know about me is that I hate shapewear. All my friends are like, girl, that dress will be so cute if you had on some spanks or you had on some friends, not all my friends, not you. You don't do that to me. I want your gut and butt loose. You let me be my real self.

But it also feels like it's really taking off where celebrities are coming out with their own shapewear brands, and now it's like in every home this old has Yiddy, Kim Kardashian has skims.

In Atlanta has their own brand of those like corsets and things and Tommy Buster things.

So yeah, and then I see a bunch of them on Instagram, like Sweet Sweat, where it's like a waste thing like a waiste trainer. But I have a lot of questions like why is this so popular now? I know we're going back to the maiden type dresses and Victorian styles, Like are we getting course? Yes, are we getting back to that? I'm not ready.

If we are, I'm not either. I'm not wearing a hoop skirt.

Hey, the doorways are not wide enough anymore. I think I want to know as a material scientist, like the technology that's going into shapewear and these new age corsets, because they're not your great, great great grannies corsets. And I'm also curious about like the impact on society, particularly when we think about body image and what we normally lies.

They X, Y and Z. I'm like, in the nineties it was messed up, But now I'm like, have we gone the other way where we're like big booty, little leg, you know, or really flat stomach, unexpected smoothness in these different places. What does that do to our images of self for men and women when we take those things off. Is it just women wearing these shapewear? Because I think men are wearing them too.

I've seen them.

Let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab is doctor Wendy Burns Ardellino.

I'm Wendy Burns Ardellino.

I am the Dean of the College of Humanities Social Sciences at the University of Houston Downtown and I am a cultural studies practitioner and scholar.

Doctor Burns Ardolino is the author of Jiggle Reshaping American Women, a book about American women in their relationship to traditional foundation garments and modern shapewear.

Most of us have probably.

Heard about SPANX, like we talked about already, but we wanted to learn more about what came before Spanx. How did the idea of shapewear come to be?

Well, it begins with the corset.

That all kind of began in the nineteenth century, and you would be hard pressed in Western society to find a woman who didn't wear a corset in that time frame. By the twentieth century, basically, corstree is on the ropes a bit.

Corsets were traditional foundation garments, so garments that go under your clothes before you put your clothes on top. It was made to support a woman's torso, to hold the women's torso in and train it into a specific desired shape. They were handmade from rigid materials like wood, ivory, and whalebone.

As the quote unquote.

Ideal image and shape of women changed throughout time, soda corsets, so there were multiple styles of corsets throughout history.

And my question is why, you know, why are women supposed to be wearing whalebones while men are walking around in free flowing pants.

The arguments about the need to wear foundation garments and to wear shaping garments, and some of those include medical discourse that women's bodies will actually not hold their form. Women are not muscular enough, so they need the external garment to hold for them, otherwise their organs are going to just kind of drop out of their bodies or something like that. And I've done some work in sport

Where was a part of that.

This is ridiculous. Yeah, absolutely ridiculous. Let me tell you.

We've talked about science and how it can be racist, sexist, and homophobic, but you can see it specifically in this scientific talk quote unquote from back in the day, and they had it all wrong. Women weren't allowed to run in marathons for this reason. They first started allowing women to run in marathons in like the seventies because of this idea.

Right, So the seventies probably for general marathons, but it wasn't until nineteen eighty four when women were allowed to participate in the Olympics in the marathons. There, that's not that long ago.

What's interesting about corcatry itself is really it is a locus of social control for women's bodies, and it really does emerge out of the discourses of hygiene, moral purpeitude, bound up with religion. Definitely patriarchal values, idealized images of the cult of womanhood and women's role in society.

This sounds eerily familiar to women's fashion today and how lots of trends and ideals are dictated by men in the male gaze, high heels, the coke bottle figure. It seems like not a lot has changed over the past couple centuries. Yes, I'm not wearing high heels. I don't like wearing high heels.

Yeah, you see, I've been wearing my sneakers with my skirt. Okay, Like these nikes feel good. So doctor Burns Ardellino told us that corset use was at a high, but you know, the trends are always changing. Skinny zy and curvy's in big button, No, but big butt, but only with this shape. Like you know, you're doing all these things to emphasize and de emphasize your body according to these changing ideals.

Shapewear when they become mass produced garments. In some ways, it democratizes shapewear because then more people can afford it. But I think the flip side of that is that the mass production of it enables it to be more controlled. There's more mass social control at the same time.

Hmm. That's such a good point. So now it's not just ladies who lunch walking around with their stomachs crushed in, but now is everybody.

And then at that point, more and more people are buying these products, right, and they might have multiple garments as opposed to like when you had a course, you know, maybe you would only have one or if you were wealthy too.

At a time because they had to be handmade.

Not only did mass production accelerate the growth of the shapewear industry, but new technology and innovation around fabrics and textiles also allowed the market to flourish, boom, and thrive.

One of the first fabrics that was used is called last X, and with last X, the elastic was woven through the fabric to give it some stretch, right, So that's kind of like a precursor to spandex.

So last text was vented in the thirties and Spandex, which we know for is elasticity, first hit the market in nineteen fifty eight. Although we see it in a lot of things now. It was first used in bras, jockstraps and athletic wear.

Now it feels like all our clothes has plastics. Yeah, every item of clothing has some type of stretch, and sometimes you'll be able to see it if your clothes are falling apart, like minar, you can see the little elastic threading that's also ran through the fabric as well, just to give it some give, so that when you're pulling on those jeans that they have some stretch.

I don't want no hard jeans. Keep the span dex in mind.

I don't even know what it's like to put on a pair of jeans that don't have any stretch. Nah, that's why the cowboys were walking like that.

Yes, the jeans were crisped, the cardboard pants. It's not the horses, y'all. It was the jeans the whole time. A good grief.

Another factor that contributed to the rise of shapewear was advertising.

Advertising is occurring in magazines that women have access to, but also trade journals, writing to fashion fires, get department stores.

And then a third prong of this is.

That literally a lot of these companies were marketing to the salespeople who were on the floor of the department stores. They would let them try out the garments, they would solicit their feedback, they would recommend how to sell the garments. So they'd be like, you need this garment because this is your problem with your body, right, That's kind of how they sold it.

So fast forward to the rise of feminism and the women's movement in the sixties and seventies. Now there's where we see a decline in shapewear use.

Feminism is on the right eyes and women really say we're not going to have our bodies be objects for men.

We're going to enjoy our bodies for our bodies.

And culturally that's such a profound moment. And I know the lore is that women burn the bras. They didn't really burn the bras, they just took them off. But I think the important part to understand about that was it was a moment of collective cultural consciousness when women really in the seventies were like, no, we're not gonna

So that's a really important point. Even if women weren't wearing bras or shapewear, it doesn't mean that the social conditions that led us to wear shapewear in the first place no longer existed.

The girdles are in our minds.

So many people struggle with healthy really relationships to eating or exercising, and a lot of that is from social pressure to look a certain way. Shapewear and external garments are just one way of affecting or controlling how our bodies are seen.

Women are still trying to constrain themselves into an idealized figure, and if you're not that figure, then what you do.

And these idealized images of what women should look like, well, not only are they unrealistic and sexists, but they also intersect with fat phobia and the idea that a person's weight correlates directly to their health, and that's simply not true.

In my book, I actually have like hang tags from the garments themselves that shows you that they're marketing it as slimming, shaping, trimming. Everything is about weight and controlling weight.

When you look back at those.

Women's journals like Red Book and Women's Day, they're actually recommending how to purchase just the right shapewear, how to wear the right shape, where how to do it correctly.

So it's very prescriptive, filled with dos and don'ts.

And again it's like taking the control away from women of their own bodies.

From the garments, to the advertising, to the reason behind it all. In the first place, shapewear seems to point back to one thing, controlling women's bodies.

And then there's this weird discourse that I follow throughout these.

Journal even advertisements for these garments, that basically says, wear this garment and it will set you free.

It does this weird.

Dichotomy where it's saying that you need to be constrained in order to be set free, and.

People buy that.

The math is not math.

And for me, women are told by their family members, by their community, by society, by their religious leaders, by the medical community, this is what you need to do in order to be a proper and good woman. Otherwise, like this idea of a loose woman. And hence the title of my book, right jiggle because we don't want jiggly bits, right, We want to have everything kind of like elaminated in smooth surface.

I had no idea that the term loose woman was about their body composition.

What I didn't either, I've always heard it related to something different.

Exactly, Doctor Burns Ottolino said, the term loose women started with Okay, if you have like jiggly bits, as she's saying that, it correlates to you being like promiscuous because all of your you know, how you're being held together, and the patriarchy says, oh, if you're not all held together and tight like that, then you're probably a promiscuous woman. So jigly bits equals promiscuity. And then as time change, we changed it to loose women, like you know, loose.

That's why, isn't it boy? The nineteenth century still has a grip on us. Okay, let's take a break, and when we come back, we'll talk about how celebrities are contributing to the shapewear conversation and how social media affects the way we see our bodies. We're back next week.

We're talking all about eco tourism with Sarah Stadola, the impacts of travel on the environment and local communities.

But right now let's get back to the lab. We've been talking with doctor Wendy Burns Ardelino all about the history of shapewear, from corsets to spandex. Shapewears rise and fall in the seventies with the women's movement and how well basically shape where it's had a comeback.

And then in the nineties again technology allows us to have these really pretty colored garments and stretch lays, and spandex is huge part of that, and then the marketability back to women.

It feels like shapewear has stuck around and is here to stay. Spanx was launched in two thousand and.

I can remember when Spanx was launched, I was like, Oh, who really needs that? We don't really need that. But I can also remember, you know what else came out that I feel like people don't talk about enough. That was borderline shapewear but make it fashion American apparel. Do you have some pants from them like that shiny shapewere it's not shapewear, but it's like spandex is just to your body. Oh yes, yes, yes, I wore those pants out.

It's not shapewear. It's not shapewear, it's a brand, no, But the smooth like.

Silhouette, yeah, it was all like spandex like that was the thing for a while. Yeah. So it started off as underwear.

Then we transitioned to the legging, you know, wearing things that we considered underwear now on the outside. And then now we had full blown bodysuits with the gloves all the way up to the neck.

Mock turtleneck. That's not my kind of turtlenick. Do you remember when people were wearing those like, hmm, I'm gonna be aging myself. But like those long shirts that were kind of like tunics. Some of them were baby doll shaped, a big belt and just like tights. Yes, I am people, she was me. I never knew where the belt was supposed to go. I have a short tour, so I just felt like it was around my neck. I felt

Baby With Yity, the reason why it was so important and why people find their groundbreaking is because it prioritizes larger sizes, like it starts at six X, and that's not something.

That you see for most apparel.

For a lot of apparel, they might have larger sizes, but they'll only have a few and so those will be sold out really quickly, and so then there's an entire population of people who don't have access to some of the clothing that they would like to have access to. You know, there's a huge mass production of extra extra smalls and size zeros and things like that, but folks that are on the plus size and of the spectrum, they don't have that option even in store.

You can't go into a store and find those sizes.

What Lizo is doing, what Yity is doing as a brand, is keeping the focal point the focus is plus size women. And that's really important because what the manufacturers in these apparel companies are always saying is that there's no market for plus size, Like you can't make money prioritizing plus size women. And what she's saying is you're wrong, and I'm gonna show you. And she has like she's been selling out and so many people are wearing YITDDI now.

I mean, and we see this in general, you know what I mean. If there's only a few being made, those few are selling out. You know, when you talk about scarcity for large sizes and we're talking extra large and two exl Okay, everybody deserves to have these options. I think this is something we've talked about in a couple of different places, but we're seeing it once again.

I have recently come into contact with some younger women and preteen girls who are just mortified about their images in social media. And I do feel like, as someone who grew up in the eighties and nineties that I did not grow up with that pervasiveness of social media controlling my every image. But I think for women, it's always like any image of yourself that's out there in your body, really it puts you at risk.

And so it's concerning.

I mean really when you think about it, like if women's bodies are often under critique or being critiqued, the more opportunity to see those bodies, the more opportunity there is to critique them, and so it is some type of risk. I can remember coming across some features of me in the eighth grade. I didn't know anything about posing, none of that stuff. I was just like a teenage dirtbag, Okay is what I was looking like.

Yeah, And now eighth graders these days, they know their angles, they know how to find the light, they know how to smile. They're wearing a full face of makeup. Yes, I mean, things are just very different now. And social media definitely has that effect because what social media does is put you in a place where you're constantly comparing

It takes me back to our Edges Snatched episode where we had with doctor Rocky Harris and he talked about the digital camera and the cameras in our phones, taking pictures of yourself and constantly evaluating yourself, and then with social media, other people evaluating you. You know, and like you said, a lot of these folks are photoshopping these photos. Those photos have run through so many processors before they

But on the other hand, and social media means that people are more likely to be scrutinizing our bodies and feel pressure to look a certain way.

There's a connection there to feeding that paranoia that women need to be a certain way. We're constantly chasing, chasing, chasing this.

Idealized body, this.

Idealized image of femininity that we can never attain. We're basically self policing. We're in the panopticon where we're looking at ourselves through the lens of the male gaze, and we're saying, no.

That's not right, and that's not right, and you have to change that, and you have to change thought.

Doctor Burns. Ardelino shared an idea from feminist philosopher Iris Marian Young about how women can occupy the male gaze even when they're trying to avoid it.

She's like, people will make the argument that I love this beautiful sweater or I love this beautiful.

Piece of shapewear, for example.

But what they love, what women are enjoying about it isn't the experience of wearing the garment right, the feel of the garment or wearing the garment. They love the way they look in the garment, which the way they look in the garment is them occupying the male gaze and looking at themselves.

I really believe that that's a social norm for us.

For women, it's like we're pre programmed from birth to experience our bodies as other people see us right through that social lens. It's almost impossible to see yourself without occupying the male gaze.

I think that's a really important framework that doctor burns Ardolino is highlighting because I feel like a lot of folks nowadays are saying, oh, I don't drust for men, I dress for women. I like when women are complimenting me. I don't need a man to compliment me, which is true,

Wow, I'm about to start saying, yes, girl, posture is slumped, relaxation is on a thousand Yes girl looking cozy, looking comfy.

That's a sleepy girl realness. That's right. I love those bags under your eyes. I can tell you've been working hard.

Yes, And so that begs the question of, like, what can we do to detach our self worth and confidence from the shape of our bodies and how we look, Like, how can we pull those things apart.

I'm still struggling with it, and I'm fifty four.

So I would say what I have come to now, based on experience.

Is that if we focus on kind of our mind, body spirit connection and what it's like to inhabit our bodies in the world and to be whole and well and whatever that means for you, because I think that's a very individualized experience. What constitutes that and how can I occupy the space of the healthiest, wellest, fittest version of myself? What is it like to inhabit this body

Think it gets around a little bit the corners of what does your body look like all the time.

So it sounds like we're trying to shift the perspective from what does my body look like? To what can my body do for me? Or what can I do with my body? And that feels like a really powerful approach.

Having a body that can do things and finding joy in the capacity of one's body is something that's often denied women. Not all women and not always, but a lot of women never experience their bodies as a body that can do things and that can be intentional and can achieve things. I can totally imagine people being like, well,

That is such a good point.

Yeah, So no matter what your abilities are when it comes to your body, you can still enjoy the body that you have and the things that it can do.

Right, So here's my pitch.

My pitch is for cultural studies and media studies education, so that our kids, our students, our women are all going into society with those media goggles on, they have the tools to discern what's happening in society.

This makes me think back to Doctor Burn's Ardelino talking about being socialized for this kind of stuff from birth, you know, And it makes me think back to people in my family saying sit still or sit like a lady, right, don't wrinkle your dress, you know, don't switch your hair out, and just you know, all of these things. Don't get your clothes dirty, yes, all that stuff. You're just limiting yourself. Now, somebody had to do laundry, So I understand part of.

That but but you're doing all of these things so other people see you as nice. And I think one of the things we didn't really talk about earlier in the episode, but should be considered, is that we sometimes see this in men.

Like in the gym Bros. Yeah, you're trying to get that ultimate V shaped body.

And going to great measures that are very unhealthy to try and get it.

Yes, I'm like, why you want to be shaped? Like Larry the Lobster who decided that.

Was in exactly and they faced some of the same societal pressures that women face.

It's not exactly the same.

It's different because men still have male privilege, but there's still a lot of men that are suffering because of social media, body image and things like that.

Yeah, And I think that just takes us right back to this thing that you kind of started touching on earlier tea about okay Mailgates, Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, and pressure. But we still are existing in this society, so right, as long as we're going to exist here, there's something about being able to exist comfortably in our skin. I guess I better copyright Beyonce Buovo and my skin Cozy and shape, where in some ways can be empowering, but

And we talk to Manti Oid Harris about the effects of social media and how body dysmorphia is now at an all time high. It seems like because people are using these filters and celebrities are using a lot of shapewear, a lot of filters to make their bodies look a certain way, but that's not actually what it is in reality, and it all can negatively affect our perception of ourselves because it's like, wow, how come my body doesn't look like that? When the truth is their body doesn't look like that.

Such a good point.

They're just doing what they want to do in order to look the way that they want to look.

All right, it's time for one thing. This episode focused on shapewear, and we talked about some positives and negatives for shapewear, but the reality is people are wearing it.

Yes, So shapewear is a part of our everyday lives, and so we really want to support shapewear that is inclusive of everybody type, everybody's size, and of marginalized communities. So we really recommend Yiddy and we will be adding some more shapewear brands in the show notes, so check it out at Dope labspodcast dot com.

All right, that's it for Lab eighty.

I want to know are y'all wearing shapewear If you are, what's your favorite kid?

What do you like? What don't you like about it? Call us and tell us what you thought. Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight. Gabriella, we got your message last week. Okay, thank you, and so just know we aren't listening to those messages when you do call Now, the semester is winding down, so don't forget to call in and tell us what you want to hear about. In our final episode of the semester,

Eight, and don't forget There's so much more for you to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat sheet for today's lab and additional links and resources in the show notes. Plus, you can sign up for our newsletter. Check it out at Dope Labs Podcast special Thanks to today's guest expert, doctor Wendy Burns Ardolino. Her book Jiggle is free on academia dot edu.

You can find her on Twitter at burns Ardellino, and.

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Lab Podcast.

Tt is on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t s h O, and you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owned Media Group. Our producers are Jenny Radlettmass and Lydia Smith of Wave Runner Studios. Our associate producer is Caro Rolando. Editing and sound design by Rob Smerzaiak, with additional mixing and sound design by Hannes Brown. Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura from