Entrepreneur Opens Spanx Cart, Hopes to End Bethesda ‘Squash-Bottom’
by Jack and Josey Knestout
“Let’s be honest; people look at each other’s butts. We want to pretend we don’t, but we all do” Barbara (“Babs”) Dandicat comments. “Let’s face it; there’s really not much else of interest on the human backside.”
It’s that Bethesda backside that Dandicat hopes to improve with her Bethesda Spanx cart – a cart that makes support undergarments quickly available to busy professionals on their lunch hours.
“Whether you’re looking at a woman or a man, the butt has a personality of its own,” Dandicat explains while helping a senior executive into the new pair of support briefs he’s just purchased on his break. “And some days, that personality is sagging. Or pinched and puckered. It needs a little help.”
Dandicat is just the person to offer that help. She looks the newly-briefed executive up and down, nodding with approval. “Yes,” she says. “The extra padding in the pouch area really gives you a lift. Now get out there and sell!”
Blushing, he hands her his credit card.
“No need to be embarrassed,” Dandicat assures him. “Looks like the ladies are already lining up right behind you.”
And she’s right. Not to mention his work buddies. Business is booming at the Bethesda Spanx cart.
Things weren’t always looking so perky for Dandicat. After being laid off from her VP position at a local real estate firm, Dandicat searched for overpaid employment for months with little success. Like many in Bethesda, she hit bottom fast: she found herself sitting at Starbucks, sipping a Skinny Latte with nearly 300 calories. “I felt so lost and jealous of all the employed people around me,” she comments.
As she watched the local moms, nannies, and neighborhood professionals walk past on their lunch breaks, her eye naturally fell to their bottoms.
She didn’t like what she saw.
“Panty lines galore.” She shakes her head, still disturbed by the memory. “Flat pancake pseudo-bottoms. Dimples of cellulite visible even through layers of spandex.” And yes – even “muffin tops” over belts.
“It would be one thing if I lived in a place like New Jersey or Indiana. But I just couldn’t believe it. This is Bethesda! ‘Why in the world don’t these people get themselves a pair of Spanx?!’ I thought.”
That thought was the kernel that would sprout a money-making Spanx cart. Dandicat envisions a whole crop of Spanx carts through the city, including mini carts for playgrounds. She also plans to implement corporate in-house suppliers that can rush a pair of briefs with extra pouch-padding just in time for the CEO’s presentation to the board of directors, or get multiple pairs of Power Panties to the team of legal secretaries who consumed a few too many mini muffins at the last business meeting.
Robin (now “Rock”) Landon, in town from San Diego, stops to check out Dandicat’s Spanx cart, and likes what he sees. “Hell, I relocated my dental practice ten years ago because I was tired of looking at the DC squash-bottoms around here. I still don’t want to see these people naked, but at least they look better with their clothes on thanks to Spanx.”
He pays Dandicat for the undergarment he has just purchased – a prototype she jokingly refers to as “a secret weapon” – The Bethesda Codpiece.
“We’ll see if it takes off,” Dandicat says. “I’ve got some test models out there on the streets, and so far it’s a thumbs-up if you know what I mean.”
This being Bethesda, Dandicat’s Spanx cart is not without its detractors as well as its fans.
“I don’t appreciate not being able to tell if a woman is or isn’t wearing panties,” Guy Pattmore III, a local attorney, complains. “Used to be, I knew what I was looking at. Now I have to retrain myself to learn ‘Spanx-eye’ so I know the difference. It’s like false advertising.”
“False advertising is part of the American way,” Dandicat counters. “Why shouldn’t that apply to butts as well as businesses?”
She looks around, smiling at the view of more compact nether regions walking down the street. “Now this—” she says, pointing at a particularly pert example, “THIS is Bethesda.” She laughs, clicking her latte glass against mine. “Bottoms up!” she jokes.
