Sara Blake, Spanx Inventor Makes Billionaire List Alongside Oprah:
Sara Blake has just made Forbes top list of women who are self-made billionaires. Her success is attributed entirely to one product, Spanx. However, while some have praised Blake for her invention, others have called accused her of promoting a dangerous "Barbie figure."
Blake began selling Spanx from her New York apartment. The new product was her own design and launched using only her $5,000 worth of savings. Now the $1 billion dollar company has put Blake at the top of a tiny list along with other self-made female billionaires like Oprah Winfrey.
Of course it didn't hurt that Oprah herself advocated Spanx as one her favorite products in 2000. Spanx is now more than just a household name, it appears to have even acquired red carpet fame.
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"They're like hosiery crack!" Suze Yalof Schwartz, a Glamour editor, told The New York Post.
"We just Spanx everybody right up!" Daniel Lawson, costume designer for NBC's Lipstick Jungle, told the Observer. "Without a lot of effort, they take off five, eight pounds immediately… It's become the Kleenex of the girdle world."
However while many women think that Blake's invention is some sort of miracle, a recent Consumer Report has suggested that Spanx just isn't what some might think.
"So pervasive is the quest to be Barbiesque that no one blinks an eye when hearing that even skinny celebrities are trying to look skinnier by donning body-slimming shapewear," Orly Avitzur said on Consumer Report. "Just take a look at 19-year-old Selena Gomez, flashing her Spanx at multiple events, or watch 22-year-old Kristen Stewart revealing too much on Jay Leno."
Although this may seem harmless, it appears that now some stars have even started to double up the Spanx.
"Indeed, it appears that the latest trend in under-fashion among the 'It Crowd' is the use of more than one constricting garment to ensure the very smoothest, sleekest, smallest possible bod," Comsumer Report suggested adding that stars like Octavia Spencer and Gwyneth Paltrow amongst others have all admitted to doubling up.
"Just a single layer of body slimming Lycra can create a host of health dangers, from painful, pinched nerves in the groin, to severe abdominal pain and digestive problems," according to the report. "Constrictive garments have also been implicated in bladder infections, vaginal yeast infections, contact dermatitis, and blood clots in the legs.
However the idea of using a "girdle" isn't really anything new, in fact it's more of a reinvention of a concept that is actually quite old. The idea of thin women using them also isn't surprising considering that the inventor herself was only a size two when she first developed Spanx.
Ironically, looking thinner wasn't even her main goal at the time. Blake's initial problem began when she didn't like the way a pair of white pants was showing her underwear line.
