There’s a moment in every woman’s life when she stands in her closet and realizes she’s been holding her breath for decades.

Mine came on a Wednesday afternoon, two weeks before my nephew’s October wedding.  For the uninitiated, shapewear is a genteel euphemism for our modern-day corsets. 

My finger brushed the textures of the arsenal I’d been slowly accumulating. Each piece holds a complicated truth —sometimes armor, sometimes chains. Each echoes a message I have heard my entire life.

“You are too much.”

Too loud. Too big. Too intense. Too opinionated. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too aware. Too direct. Too confident. Too smart. 

I pulled out my favorite mid-thigh bodysuit —the one that makes my booty pop and my “empress” dress fall just right —and had an epiphany. I had a choice.

The power wasn’t in sucking it in or letting it all hang out. It wasn’t in wearing or not wearing. The real power was in the choosing.

“No,” I whispered to the scared little girl inside me that internalized the idea that we needed to be contained so long ago. 

“Not today.” She did not give up the ghost, but she settled down.

Many of us inherited our containment like a family heirloom, passed down from mother to daughter in a lineage of restriction. 

My grandmother wore girdles. My mother wore Legg’s control-top pantyhose. I graduated to Spanx, and now HoneyLove.

We keep finding new ways to compress ourselves into acceptable dimensions. 

We learned early that “a lady never shows the work of becoming presentable.”

The hook and eyes. The struggling and squeezing. The secrets we keep, even from ourselves. 

I wear shapewear sometimes. I’m admittedly not a fan of my muffin top. I don’t wear them because I have to. I’m not at all concerned about what others think. I wear them because I want to. 

The power is in the choosing.
The revolution is in the why.
Why? Because I want to.

“I spent forty-three years being told I was too much,” one woman told me. 

“Too tall, too curvy, too loud, too ambitious,” she said.

She even went as far as calculating the hours she spent trying to container herself. “Three hours a day choosing clothes that hide. Adjusting and checking angles in mirrors.” 

45.5 days a year, spent on the mathematics of appearing smaller.

“I’ll never get those days back.”

The hidden algorithm of femininity: subtract space, divide attention, multiply effort, reduce self. 

We’ve all done the math.

image by the author

But there have always been women who show us another way.

We all know at least one.

The aunt who traded pantyhose for going panty-less in a short dress and go-go boots.  That colleague who refused to dye her grays. The friend who takes up space unapologetically. 

Sometimes we call them “too much” behind their backs while secretly envying their freedom. 

I am that woman, too, sometimes. The one with the voice that carries. The one with all the opinions. The one who finds it impossible to make herself small. The one still learning, slowly and sometimes all at once, that “too much” is a synonym for exactly enough.

The women who raise eyebrows are a stand for themselves, who laugh loud in quiet rooms. They teach us that rebellion doesn’t always roar. It often yawns and stretches.

“The first time I went on a date without trying to ‘shrink to fit,’ I felt exposed,” another woman confessed. “But I also felt free.”

What they don’t tell you about becoming uncontained is that it’s contagious. 

One woman refuses to squeeze herself small, and another woman’s world cracks open. 

The ripples move outward. 

A mother throws away her metaphorical corsets, and her daughter learns she never needed them. 

A wife stops apologizing for her desires, and her marriage either expands or expires. 

An executive lets her voice fill the room without modulation, and other women’s voices rise in response.

The danger was never in being too much. 

It was in believing we should be less.

Here’s your permission slip, though you never needed it:

Take up space. 

All of it. 

Let your body exist in its wild and wonderful form – adorned or unadorned, contained or flowing free, but always on your terms. 

Let your voice carry.
Let your desires wake the neighbors. 
Let your ambitions terrify the status quo.

Wear the shapewear. Or don’t. But do it because you choose to, not because the world told you to contain yourself until you fit its calculations.

I still have a drawer full of shapewear.

Some I’ve kept. Some I’ve released.

Each decision is a choice, not a mandate.

I remind my inner child, “You were never too much.” Sometimes, she believes me, but not always.

The most dangerous thing a woman can do is exist without permission. Without shame. Without explaining why she takes up as much space as she does.

Take up space. The world will adjust.

xo,

P.S. If this post resonated with you, share it with your besties. Got a too much story of your own? I’d love to hear it. Leave me a message.

Never miss an issue. Subscribe here.