SPANX IS NOT FOR SPANKING

Note to young woman walking along sidewalk on the Lawrence/Methuen border:

SPANX IS NOT APPROPRIATE OUTERWEAR.  

REPEAT - SPANX NOT EQUAL TO SHORTS.

  
Seriously, is this really something you need to be told?

My daughter and I have hair appointments in New Hampshire this afternoon.  Anyone who has ever attempted to drive north on 93 between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. knows that "You can't get there from here."  These are not crucial appointments; we're not having hair transplants or anything like that.  Daughter is getting her long hair trimmed and hi/low-lighted.  I am getting mine trimmed to grow it back out again.  I probably should get my hair colored or foiled or something because I have more gray than the Confederate Army.  But I take the trim and run.

To get to New Hampshire is an exercise in futility, so we decide to avoid the highway and drive up route 28, instead.  Driving north on 28 means passing through the heart of Lawrence and the armpit of Methuen.  (I can say this as I lived in both cities multiple times at multiple locations, including the hearts and armpits of both.)  Driving up route 28 allows for two truths:  There are seventeen lights alone between South Lawrence and the MSPCA in Methuen; and Spanx is NOT outerwear.

We are tooling around, minding our own damn business, when out of the corners of our eyes we notice a young woman with long, dark hair, walking down the street without her pants. 

Without.  Her.  Pants.

("How do you know, Professor Heliand, that she wears no pants?" you ask.  Yes, I heard you.)

She is very obviously without her pants because she wears flesh-colored Spanx underwear.  Walking down the street.  In a shirt.  Sandals.  And Spanx.  Not just any Spanx - Spanx the color of all the rest of the visible skin on her body.

From behind as we approach, she looks absolutely butt-freakin' naked.  We catch a guy across the street stop dead in his tracks and stare at her for a full twenty seconds when she passes by his line of vision.  It doesn't take rocket science to read his mind; he is thinking exactly what we are thinking:  "Holy shit, I can see that chick's ass."  But we cannot truly see her ass; she is, after all, wearing Spanx.

Kids, in case you missed this memo, Spanx is UNDERwear.  Not outerwear, not sports wear, not "wear it while you're walking down the Lawrence/Methuen sidewalk" wear.  UNDERWEAR.  Mother-freakin' unmentionables.

Anyone who wears Spanx as shorts and parades around in public that way ought to BE spanked. 

(That being said, I just want to add that she didn't need the damn Spanx in the first place, and that in itself is a smack.)