There is a moment – just seconds into getting dressed – when I think I might panic. The hem of my stretchy top has got rolled up round my ribs before my head has popped out of the neck hole, and with my hands still stuck in the sleeves, I cannot reach round to pull it down. I wriggle helplessly for a minute, but the situation doesn’t improve; the band of rolled-up fabric is taut across my chest, immovable. That’s when I feel the first tingle of rising alarm – so familiar from early childhood – that comes of being trapped in your clothes.
I am trying, for the first time, to put on an item of shapewear for men – an ordinary-looking, highly elasticated long-sleeved workout top that will, I hope, give me the instant slim profile of someone who goes to the gym regularly, instead of not since the pandemic started.
