I know what you’re thinking: What the heck sort of name is SQUEEM for shapewear?
Is it a portmanteau of squeeze and seam?
Squeal and scream?
Not to mention SQUEEM makes me think of being squeamish, like I’m supposed to put on a girdle and then watch a HD video of my great uncle Jack try to remove his most furry and misshapen moles with toenail clippers.
*shudder*
Gah. I just grossed myself out.
I’m not going to pretend I understand the 40 year-old Brazilian company’s choice of nomenclature, nor do I understand why the language options on the website are English and Spanish but not, you know, Portuguese, the language they speak in Brazil.
I also don’t understand the whole Virtuous Circle thing, which I’m hoping are just bad translations from Portuguese because neither the English nor the Spanish version stands up to any sort of rigorous logic.
One thing leads to another. From better body to better mind to a better you. Squeem is designed for weight loss and instant progress. […] Immediate results will make you care more for your body; giving you the long-term benefits you’ll need for a complete transformation, and that is The Virtuous Circle.
Howlingly bad copy aside (oh, and the music on every page of their website. Every. Page. and it doesn’t remember your audio preferences so if you’re going to go to the site, just turn off your speakers) this is actually a pretty good product and it comes in sizes up to 4X.
Here’s how it went down:
The folks at Squeem were all up in my kool aid for months trying to send me a sample for review and I wasn’t all that interested because frankly, I get a lot of free junk through this site and most of it is just exactly that: Junk.
I’m not interested in getting it, I’m not interested in reviewing it and I’m certainly not interested in having it take up closet space, affronting the dignity of all my nice stuff by its very presence.
Still, I had a look around their site and aside from the audio and the gross abuse of Flash, I generally liked what I saw so I ordered the “Perfect Waist“.
Squeem has light control products when all you really need is some smoothing, the “Control Fit” which has a much firmer grip and “I Ain’t Playin’ With You” (okay, that’s not actually what they call it) that’s pretty much just pure rubber and will make you sweat like at least one, if not several, stuck pigs.
What makes Squeem special, supposedly, is this magical rubber and cotton treatment that gives you all the compression of the former with all the comfort of the latter.
Uh huh. Sure. A rubberized slimmer that breathes. I’ll put that right up there with unicorns, fat female romantic leads and Mexican cops who don’t take bribes on the Never Gonna Happen shelf.
But I’ll be damned if it didn’t actually work.
I’m not going to say the Perfect Waist felt like wearing a flimsy cotton chemise, but considering there’s practically an entire rainforest worth of rubber in there, I didn’t get sweaty at all. It was warm but completely breathable. How? How is that possible? More importantly, what does this mean for my chances of meeting a unicorn or an unbuyable cop?
Sqeem’s maiden voyage on the Good Ship Plumcake happened in October when I went to meet Hot Latin Boy’s mother for the first time.
I’m going to be honest: it flipped up a little at the bottom and down a little at the top.
Someone with a shorter waist would’ve been able to anchor both ends down with their undies and bra and probably avoid that problem, and still, it wasn’t such a big deal because the fabric is thin enough to not mess with the lines of an outfit if some flippage does accidentally occur, but it happened. Do with that what you will.
It was blessedly invisible under a thick ponte knit dress in a way my corset was not, and although I did have to take it off before I actually met his mother thanks to a panic attack (I was nervous enough to begin with and to get to her house we had to drive through Downtown Tijuana on a Friday night which is exactly as horrifying as it sounds, especially if you’re a woman with delicate sensibilities like myself. I can only endure the visual assault of so many clear heels at a time without dire medical repercussions, although in their defense, they WERE hookers.) I have no problems recommending SQEEM to anyone looking for quality shapewear.
The Perfect Waist isn’t going to replace my corset for major reshaping needs, but it’s telling that when I packed my suitcase of clothes for the big move to Villa Plumcake to tide me over while the rest of my stuff was in storage, the Perfect Waist came with me.
Grade: A-
Okay, that website is 80s-porno light horrible, but if it only rolls down a little as opposed to full on blubber blow-out, I’m game.
Comment by Christine — February 2, 2012 @ 12:19 am
By the way, they appear to be available on Amazon as well, if you don’t feel like sharing your credit card info with a new site.
Comment by daisyj — February 2, 2012 @ 1:55 pm
Thought you’d enjoy an amusing corset related cartoon:
Comment by MrsBug — February 3, 2012 @ 5:09 pm
I assume you already pondered the idea that “virtuous circle” is intended to be the opposite of a “vicious circle,” and they’re implying that one good effect leads to another good effect, ultimately coming around to recreate the first good effect and on ad infinitem? I mean, vice is the opposite of virtue but vicious circle isn’t the opposite of virtuous circle (sorry, Brazilians), but I can sort of see where they were going.
Still very very bad copy.
Comment by the misfit — February 7, 2012 @ 5:55 pm