If you Google “women’s relationship to their bodies,” the search results in 5,380,000,000 billion (in a mere 0.68 seconds).

The reshaping of women’s bodies through shapewear, from corseting to Spanx^®, remains a hot topic of conservation … think Kim Kardashian, Lizzo, and the like.

Recently, Dope Labs interviewed Dr. Wendy Burns-Ardolino, Dean of the College of Humanities & Social Sciences, for its Spotify podcast “Jiggly: Shapewear Then and Now—Lab 080.” 

Fifteen years ago, Burns-Ardolino wrote her first book, “Jiggle: (Re)Shaping American Women” (Lexington Books, 2007), “predicated on my dissertation research, which focused on women’s relationship to their bodies as mediated by social conventions—in this case, shapewear,” she noted.

Per the Dope Labs site, the episode took a look at how “Lizzo has Yitty, Kim has SKIMS, and even our favorite influencers are doing ads for waist trainers on Instagram. Shapewear is in. These aren’t your great-great-granny’s corsets … things have changed. Learn about the history of shapewear and how the trends are impacting societal beauty standards.”

While the podcast focused on today’s perspectives about idealized female bodies and shapewear, Ardolino-Burns noted that the podcasters also saw the “necessity in retracing historically how this reshaping phenomenon through shapewear provides a clearer understanding of how women’s bodies continue to be shaped and reshaped by our cultural beauty standards,” she said.