Muffin Tops

I love those huge, freshly baked bran muffins I used to grab at the deli in New York before dodging trucks and errant drivers for a cab. Who cares that they probably contained half my day's calorie allotment! Yes, I know, I should have walked those puppies off...shame on me!

Too many muffins, and many years later, I am shocked and chagrined to discover that I have what the fashion police call, "muffin tops"...those jiggly rolls that spill over the top of my designer blue jeans, that can only be camouflaged by over-sized sweaters...not the look this season, I might add!

Thanks to Charla Krupp's book, "How Not to Look Old," I am told to trot as fast I can over to my nearest department store and stock up on a wardrobe of Spanx. They promise to peel away pounds and banish the bulges. I arrive in lingerie. There they are, hanging in a nude-colored line-up, just begging for me to take them home. Compared to a year's worth of lipo, they're a bargain. Compared to my Bargain Basement Budget, a wardrobe of shapers, as they're called, is out of the question.

But SpexyLady is a stealth shopper! Just as I was rounding the corner from my weekly Target trip, what should I find, but the answer to my muffin tops! Assets by Sara Blakely...the inventor of Spanx! Slightly looser than the Spanx tank top version, and almost half the price of its department-store cousin, Assets--only at Target and Target.com -- has plenty of hold-in power to trim the torso, ridding me of my unsightly rolls until the pilates kicks in, or I win the lottery and lipo those lumps! As for those bran muffins, I think I'll pass!