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ALL WRAPPED UP

I was a middle-aged mummy
By Lucie Nelka |

Shouting the promise that I’d “lose six to thirty inch-es or my first visit would be free,” the American Body Wrap ad that I heard running morning, noon, and night on every station in town made me catch my breath with sheer excitement. Could this be the first swimsuit season that I wouldn’t have the shopping dilemma of where to purchase suits for the full-figured gal? My friend Sally and I signed up immediately at the “special introductory rate” of $12.95 for one wrap.

“Sign in here and go have a seat,” said the breasty brunette at the reception desk inside a shiny new office building in far North Dallas. I glanced around the waiting room. Several seats to my right sat John, a bookish type with earth shoes, next to him tattooed Jesse, and to his right, a robust twelve-year-old with a huge pink bow in her hair and her equally rotund mother. Then there loomed Dot, a sixtyish woman of Zero Mostel-like proportions in a yellow warm-up suit. Sally and I looked like spaghetti strands amid this motley- and hefty-crew.

We were called to the weigh station and warned to use the restroom now because once the wrap began, there would be no turning back. Five minutes later, my partner and I were being escorted down the long hall to thinness.

The first stop was the changing/wrapping room. The stall was lined with hooks laden with the outer garments of other wrapees. I was told to strip down to my bra and panties and wait for a knock on the door. In walked a distinctly unsympathetic “wrap consultant.” With measuring tape in hand, she calculated my inches, jotted them down, and began the wrap. Bobbing in a huge white plastic galIon jug were the promised “rolls of gauze, soaked in a mineral and vitamin solution.”

“What kind of minerals and vitamins?” I timidly asked.

“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret solution,” she snapped. “But this juice will be absorbed into your dermal layer, where fat cells are found, and dissolve the cellulite. All you need to do is get wrapped enough times and you’ll see the difference. And, of course, we have variously priced packages available to help you eliminate those inches.”

The wrapping started from the bottom up; first my ankles, then spiraling upward to my chest. As each new layer of gauze tightened around my flab, my heart leapt with joy. In one hour, I would surely emerge as thin as a shoestring.

Dripping in the secret solution, I was instructed to cover up with a yellow rain slicker and go to the outer room to find an empty lounge chair, and there to recline and relax the inches away. My friend Sally was already on deck, perusing a copy of Better Homes and Gardens. Scanning the room, I spied more overweight mummies here than in the tombs of the Great Pyramid. Rows and rows of yellow raincoats stretched as far as the eye could see. We were given blankets for our legs since the gauze was beginning to feel cold and clammy. The skin around my thighs and legs began to tingle and sting as if I had fallen into a vat of salt water immediately after shaving.

To pass the time, I counted the number of overweight wrap counselors and the people summoned from their lounge chairs to be unwrapped, who seemed to reappear no thinner. My spirits were sinking by the minute, and I had twenty of those left.

At last, my number was up. With the ice-cold strips of gauze lying at my feet, I was measured again, asked to think about what package would work best for me, told to dress, and to meet my new pal in the sales room. I scrutinized my torso, stared down my stomach, gasped at my thighs. They all looked the same. In a mad panic. I packed up my things and headed to the sales office. The grim results were displayed in graph style-I had dropped one-half inch from my back-my back)! I would have gladly given up inches anywhere else, but my back?

I never did return to that glistening office building, nor did I purchase any of the wrap packages. It was harder to convince Sally, the big loser, who had dropped two-and-one-half inches from her right arm, that this wouldn’t be our bikini summer after all.

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