Tight as corsets,fajas are a short cut to curves

The fajas comes in a variety of shapes and sizes,from full-body jumpsuits to tight belly bands.

Blanca Murillos morning routine,for the most part,would seem unremarkable to any woman: she washes her face,brushes her teeth,runs a comb through her blond bob and daubs on makeup. Then,as she has for the past seven years,she tugs on her girdle.

Known as a faja,from the Spanish word for wrap,it was imported from Colombia,where until recently it was used mostly for post-operative wear by recovering liposuction patients to keep swelling to a minimum and ensure that the skin tightens properly. But it has been embraced by young Latinas as a shortcut to a curvaceous body. Such girdles are a resurgent fashion phenomenon to a growing number of women who wriggle into them each day without a thought of what feminist Gloria Steinem might say. Their newfound popularity is very much in evidenceor at least,the results areon the streets of New Yorks Queens,which is largely populated by immigrants from Colombia.

You see the love handles? asked Murillo,33,a trim hairdresser who stands a doll-like 4 feet 3 inches tall,as she pinched a small fold of flesh at her midsection and lifted her shirt to reveal a well-worn faja.

Story continues below this ad

Colfajas,which manufactures fajas in Colombia and exports them,raised its production by 47 percent last year and exported 60,000 items,said Jean Pierre Velez,who helps run the family-owned company.

The fajas comes in a variety of shapes and sizes,from full-body jumpsuits to tight belly bands. The effects depend on the fabric heft of the fajas; they come in lycra,cotton,nylon and latex. Prices typically run from $20 to more than $70. A lot of Spanish songs talk about women with shapes like a guitar,so thats the curved look that Latina women want. Getting the look requires some grit. Tugging on a faja can become a desperate bout of woman versus fabric. Flesh must be coaxed inside,battened down by hooks and,finally,sealed with a zipper that can force the air out of your lungs.

Girdles,once de rigueur,mostly disappeared during the 1960s,said Valerie Steele,the author of The Corset: A Cultural History and the director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Clothing was showing more of the body,so it wasnt good enough to just push the fat around, she said.

The newfound popularity of fajas comes at a time when skyrocketing obesity rates crash into a body ideal that seems skinnier than ever. Theres this radical disjunction between an ideal,which is slender and muscular,and a reality that more and more people are dramatically overweight, Steele said.