Squeezing Teenage Girls Into Girdles

You have to wonder, is it the Mad Men effect? The corsets and girdles that went out of style in the 70s are back, now discreetly called “shapewear,” and they’re being marketed to girls as young as 13. Good Morning America recently reported on the trend in a segment that described shapewear like Spanx as “necessary,” “a way of life,” and “the must-have accessory” for teenagers, who are said to be wearing them every day to school. “You’ve got the training bra and then you’ve got the Spanx. Everyone wears them,” one girl tells the camera.

It’s not only bizarrely retro, it’s frankly alarming to see people returning to the girdle, particularly if it is becoming a right of passage for girls before their bodies are even developed enough to wear a real bra. Besides making girls more likely to develop an eating disorder, child psychologist Ned Hallowell says the popularity of shapewear for teens might mean “never being happy with your own body image.”

And some of it is even being designed especially for teenagers: Jill Zarin, formerly of The Real Housewives of New York City, has such a line of girdles called, grossly, Skweez. In her interview Zarin argues that shapewear is good for girls because it “normalizes” their bodies—a claim that tells a young girl her unsqueezed body isn’t normal. That has to be one of the worst messages you can send a 13-year-old, along with the message that spandex is the best way to make yourself fit the idealized norm of what women’s bodies should look like. We are used to celebrities and non-celebrities alike supplementing (or maybe supplanting) healthy diet and exercise with Photoshopping and Spanx. But without proper perspective, these things can distort a child’s reality. It’s 2012. Healthy diet and exercise should be the new normal, not body shame and spandex.