Dear God,
I’m sorry to bother you, but I have to beg. I know you want us to love our bodies, it’s just that years of conditioning to hate my body have me fretting about how my waistline will look in my angel tunic when I pass from this life. Help me out — give us some Spanx to wear under our angel robes. There’s no place like the great beyond to help me finally get that hourglass shape I desire, O Creator!
It might seem silly to worry about my heavenly shapewear before I’ve even died, God, but… thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as Earth as it is in Heaven. I gotta worry about my figure in both spiritual realms.
To be frank, I’m currently dealing with some living-world paunch. You understand how it is. I can’t let anyone see my belly. You know what they say in magazines, sitcoms, and cool college frat parties — “fat is so unbecoming on a woman.” Thus, the need for Spanx.
I’d like to stop sucking in my gut, really. I’ve just been doing it my whole life. In third grade, a boy on the playground said, “Your belly jiggles like jelly!” I was so rattled, I’ve spent the rest of my life shoving my body into control-top undershorts! My body has resembled not a muffin top, but a plastic straw somehow filled with boba tea — lumpy in all the wrong places.
I’ve worn Spanx to my job, my 8th grade formal dance, the library, and the Senate Confirmation Hearing of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts; while hang-gliding in Costa Rica, and performing the role of Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!; under my wedding dress, in a bird sanctuary, and sitting front row at a Dixie Chicks concert.
I once had my appendix taken out. I asked the doctors to cut around my bike shorts, lest they see too much of my real gut.
Once I get to heaven, I won’t be able to enjoy my eternal bliss and reward without Spanx. The angels will say they’re helping their souls find ultimate peace, but I just know they’ll judge my physique. Jesus says, “Judge lest not ye be judged,” but they were people too, after all. And why shouldn’t they criticize my body? They’ve all read Cosmo in line at the supermarket.
It’s just, God, I will need to have that defined waist under my robe. I’m a true pear-shape — resoundingly voted as “world’s least-desired woman shape.” All I got working in my favor are the wonders of science, applied to organ-crunching shapewear. Just grant me these Spanx, O God!
I recognize we were all created in your Holy name, O Lord, and we should be content with our corporeal casings. It’s just that, while butts are now getting their time in the sun, stomachs never will. Feed this fashion desert the manna of Spanx, Lord!
I’m trying to find peace with my body, God. But really — next time, couldn’t you make the angel’s robe have a truly functional belt? Let me be 36-24-36, if only in the afterlife.
Love,
Maggie