Dear clothing manufacturers,

You have created pants that you describe as "flattering" or even as "flattening your tummy." Allow me to explain something to you. I will use very small words.

If your pants squish your tummy fat, it will have to go somewhere. It does not, contrary to any desire you or I might have, simply vanish. Nor does it push into the empty cavity of your body, because your body is already full of important things like organs and bones and, perhaps sadly, visceral fat.

There is, in other words, nowhere for the fat you are squishing to go but up and over the waistband of said "tummy-flattening" pants.

Sincerely,

Your friend Xie