friends. above and beyond the call of duty

do you know what good friends do?

they spend their entire saturday night in a NYC studio apartment listening to the concert version of Les Miserables alternately wrapping others or allowing themselves to be wrapped really really really tightly in duct tape from just below their bum up to their neck. not just once...twice.

breathe.

then, having a pair of cold scissors edge their way up from the base of their bum, snip-snip-snipping through the cast, uncomfortably close to the skin. the cast then peeled, tugged, wrangled away from their oxygen-starved body. any tape that may accidentally snag the skin leaves big blue-red welts, and baby hairs that once delicately floated above shoulders are unmercifully ripped out when the cast comes off.

wouch!

not some strange weight-loss ritual, no. we were making the dress forms for my show size ate. which, of course you're going to come and see it so you'll know what i mean when you see these suckers on stage, riiiiiiigghhhht?

it's an interesting thing to see your form 3 dimensionally, hanging on a hanger in the doorway of a kitchen. we're always used to seeing ourselves in one dimension - in the mirror. so when you see your body there, suspended in midair next to your friend's, you can't help but have a moment of "so that's what i look like."

ehhh. not so bad. not so great either. human maybe?

it wasn't an altogether harrowing experience. probably helped that i was in a room with all of my friends going thru the same thing and, like me, their bod's are imperfectly perfect too. all different shapes and sizes - r's charming petite hourglass; k's abundant bosom; j's eensy weensy waist and perfect breasts; my broad, strong shoulders narrow waist, and even narrower hips. (i look like mary lou retton, if mary lou retton were about 2 feet taller.)

there was, of course, the requisite body bashing you'll find in any room of women standing around in their underwear:

oh, i have a sway back.

ugh. i hate my belly.

ew. my butt is huge. can you make it smaller with tape?

but, all in all we were pretty gentle on ourselves, and for all the welts, ripped out hair, and oxygen deprivation, it was a fun evening. definitely surreal. i can honestly say i'll probably never spend another saturday night in nyc, underwear-less, turning like a jewelry box ballerina as i'm being wrapped in white duct tape by one of my best friends, zero circulation in my legs, sipping a vodka gimlet, and singing along with Jean Valjean.

God on high, hear my prayer...

GET ME THE F**K OUT OF THIS THING.

mostly, i think the evening made us exceedingly grateful that the corset has gone the way of so many other painful beauty conventions - foot binding, leeching (for that lovely pale color the Medieval maidens dug so much), the feathered bang.