Pain is not the price of beauty.

I have styled many women for special events over the years. Weddings, birthdays, engagements, graduations, charity balls, all of it. One of the most common things a woman would say when trying on an outfit for such an occasion is 'I'll have to buy the suck me in undies'. By which she means shapewear.

Shapewear is nothing new. Corsets were prominent in western fashion from the 16th - 20th century, reaching peak popularity in the Victorian era.

During this time, corsets were long, cinching in the waist, flattening the stomach, shaping the hips and rounding the bust.

The invention of metal eyelets in the 1820's meant that they could be laced very tightly, so the extreme hourglass shape became the ideal of the day.

By the 1920's, the corset had been mostly abandoned, but the 400 year tradition of shaping women was as strong as ever.

The corset didn't disappear, it transformed.

Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand 'SKIMS' has the tagline 'Solutions for every body'. She is selling a solution, but what exactly is the problem?

Kardashian's line includes bodysuits, bras, shorts, leggings and waist trainers. All available in varying degrees of compression from light to extra strong.

She describes her bodysuits using terms like, butt lifting, core sculpt and push up which read more like a gym program than underwear.

She also sells a product called the 'Seamless sculpt face wrap' which comes in a compression level of 'strong'. It is designed to function in a similar way to post surgery compression garments. But what exactly are we recovering from? Our natural faces?

The branding changed, the goal didn't.

I have worn opaque tights with a 'control top' and underwear that 'sucked me in'. But what I remember most about those occasions wasn't how wonderful I looked, it was how I couldn't wait to get home and take the damn things off.

So what is the real point of all this cinching, sucking, pushing and lifting? What disturbance are these garments seeking to control?

Female power.

What would happen if we all stopped caring what body shape was deemed 'ideal'? What would happen if we stopped treating our bodies like a problem to be solved? What would happen if we relished the body we have?

Pain is not the price of beauty. Pain is the price of compliance.

Compliance with beauty standards that you didn't create.

But you have a choice.

You don't have to comply.

Start deprogramming.

This week, instead of cataloguing all the things that need to be fixed, I want you to give your body one compliment.

Not a transformation.

Not a quick fix.

Just one compliment.

Every, single morning.

There is no 'solution for every body' because there is no problem. There is only power, yours.

Julie x