My name is Bananor and I have cellulite.

And most likely, if you are a woman, you do too.  Most women have cellulite and about 10% of men do too.  You don’t have to have an ass like , it can appear wherever there is any fat, even the ittiest bittiest bit of it.

Before we get carried away, let me say that we North Americans have been saying it wrong.  It’s a French word and is supposed to be pronounced ‘cell – you – leet’.   Since it’s French I will put it in fancy italics from now on to remind us to pronounce it properly.  It makes sense that the French who are such long-time admirers of women in their full spectrum of beauty should take this matter seriously enough to name it.

So what is this cellulite business?  esplains it like so: “Cellulite is actually a fancy name for collections of fat that push against the connective tissue beneath a person’s skin, which causes the surface of the skin to dimple or pucker and look lumpy.”

So besides decreasing the amount of fat on your body, what else can be done to keep yourself cellulite-free and therefore more socially acceptable?  What am I saying — when the scales tip (literally) and 85% of North Americans are morbidly obese, cellulite may switch from being tolerated to something worth flaunting.  Being ‘cheeky’ might take on a whole new meaning.

I’m game to try new things so I took to the shops and asked around for modern-day cures.  , , , , ….nearly all pointed me silently toward the dizzying array of expensive little glass pots of cellulite cream.  Most of the time I got the ‘look’ and “No…sorry”.  The ‘look’ was like I’d been asking for some sort of salve for rubbing on herpes outbreaks or something.  It might not have helped that I was asking if they had creams for curing cellulite.

There are some interesting articles about how to prevent cellulite which those Kids Health people might want to jump on.  You can read about .  Basically they say that cellulite is a modern problem b/c of all the junk we consume and from living a sedentary lifestyle.  No shockers there.

But this is perhaps the most shocking cause of cellulite ever:  PANTIES!  I know, I shake my head with great sorrow as I type this.  I LOVE panties.  (I’m not the only one, check out .)  I love to say the word panties just to bug those people who hate the word panties.  I know they’re not the ‘it’ underwear of the moment but don’t poo-poo them out of hand.  The panty has been a 20th century life-changing invention for women.  Just think of how much it would suck to carefully stuff some sort of bloomer into your jeans instead of a simple panty every day.

Anyway, people love panties.  But why do panties cause cellulite?  Apparently only the traditional panty with the elastic around the openings (the ones that cause those awesome panty lines) cause cellulite.  This is b/c the elastic cuts off some of the circulation to the lady humps (butt).  All other forms of panties are fine.  Aside:  The thong has received some flack in recent years since rumours started abounding about how bum-related bacteria travels down the thong bit to your lady parts which causes infections of said lady parts.  Hmmm, seems like that’s less of a thong-related problem than a hygiene-related problem to me. 

Ok thanks for the bad news on the panty front, right?  So is there a cure for cellulite then?  Apparently there are many cures, most of which sound absolutely crazy.

Like these special leggings by (left).  I would think that being seen in white leggings is the last thing someone with cellulite would want.

There are seem to be a lot of answers hidden away in the book which must be so ground-breaking that they can’t be shared on the intertubes for fear that no one will buy the book.

There are special massages such as the .  I tried something like  this once for $100.  It involved having my lymph nodes and cellulite-prone areas vigourously massaged and rubbed in a very painful way for a good half hour.  Some kind of tingly lotion was subsequently applied and I was wrapped up in a heated space-age blanket and left to sleep in a blissful, cocoon-like state while my body flushed out fat and toxins in the form of sweat.  I did sweat a great deal and afterward I could have sworn that the way the fat was distributed on my body looked slightly different (not gone, simply redistributed), but I don’t know that it was worth that much money for such a small improvement (if you could have called it that).

Some people claim that .  That makes more sense but people must prefer the white magic leggings to yoga, otherwise my local yoga studio would be forever crowded.  Overall though the consensus is that it’s all a hopeless business, another sad lot in life for lady folk () like menstruation and having your boobs stared at randomly.

But I say don’t give up ladies.  Let’s turn this dimply frown upside-down.  I challenge you to try these steps as my Bananor’s Cure for Cellulite:1.  Collect all of your elasticized panties.2. Do something memorable with your favourite pair (frame it in a shadowbox, paint it gold and make it into a Golden Panty Award for future bridal shower, or maybe as a way to make some quick bucks).3. Throw them away, ruthlessly.4. Go shopping.  Take your partner if he/she is a fan of helping you buy your unmentionables.  If he/she isn’t….you may have bigger problems than cellulite to deal with.5. Wear the new panties that don’t have the binding elasticized openings.  Ta daaaaaa!

One more thing – cellulite isn’t a C-word.  It’s not a swear.  Let’s work on stopping the shame together.  Re-branding always works, so start calling it cellulite and pretty soon we’ll see the stigma disappear.