Do you feel like a chain store? Practically floored.

[venta]

Funniest thing on the news today: M&S anti-cellulite knicker claims 'misleading'

...contains the wonderful paragraph:

"The £29.50 Anti-Cellulite Firm Control Waist and Thigh Clincher pants contain vitamin E, aloe vera and caffeine."

Caffeinated pants?

I appreciate that cellulite blights some people's lives but really... who thought caffeinated pants would help?

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I've just been reading the highlights out loud to my colleagues :)

I thought the title was fairly hilarious too, especially as in the Most Read Stories box it just says 'M&S knicker claims 'misleading''.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Also, what happens when you wash them? Doesn't all the caffeine etc get washed out? Are these actually incredibly expensive single-wear disposable pants?

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I would like to point out that I bought a pair of M&S 'Outstanding Value' jeans yesterday for less than half the cost of said pants.

[venta.livejournal.com]

According to the website (http://www.marksandspencer.com/Anti-Cellulite-Control-Waist-Cincher-Knickers/dp/B0031ARAKY?ie=UTF8&qid=1272538972&categoryNodeID=&ref=sr_1_2&page=&node=42966030&sr=1-2&mnSBrand=core&rh=), they're both machine washable and tumble-dryable. I guess the millions of micro-bubbles which hold the caffeine in place are waterproof :)

I also note that M&S sell the pants as "cinchers", not "clinchers" as the BBC called them. Which makes slightly more sense.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link - I was wondering what they looked like. That's more than a pair of knickers, really, and I can understand the price a bit better now. I'd still say they look more like they should cost £10-15, though, rather than nearly £30.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that if one is to wear them everyday one needs (one hopes!) more than one pair!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I guess the millions of micro-bubbles which hold the caffeine in place are waterproof :)

Oh yeah, then how do they get the active ingredients to our skin then? :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oy, you, keep your spirit of scientific enquiry to yourself, we're trying to sell pants here!

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Obviously you are forgetting about the memory effect of knicker elastic, variant transit caffeine osmosis and the quantum entanglement of vitamin E.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

In that case, I completely retract my statement :-).

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

*nods* I wondered about that.

Mind you, the 'miracle results' of most anti-cellulite creams are largely the effect of massaging your legs twice a day. You'd get the same results with baby oil.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Yeah....but pressing the babies to get the oil is generaly considered bad and wrong =;-)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Does that mean people's bottoms will never sleep again? If so, what does that even mean?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Worse, constant contact with these pants all day might give people's bottoms the jitters...

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Eventually they might go psycho.

[rosenkavalier.livejournal.com]

And I notice from the article that cellulite is apparently caused by that favourite of the health/diet/cosmetics industry - unspecified, mysterious 'toxins'...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

That made me cringe too. Seriously, unless you have heavy metal poisoning, your body is pretty good at NOT hanging on to toxins.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I feel I must defend M&S here. Nowhere on the product page does it say that any of the measures are effective.

For example, when they say "caffeine to slim and tone" they're describing the reason why it was included, not making a claim that it will actually accomplish this goal.

(I are srs blogger. This is srs comment.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think I'm willing to consider that "misleading", if not actively wrong. They may be within the law with their claims, since the "independently proven" part may just apply to the structure of the garment rather than the three natural ingredients. But I'm happy for the label to be called misleading.

Then again, I'd be happy for massive numbers of products which claim to reduce cellulite / help you lose weight / make you look younger to be described as misleading, so I don't know why these pants are being singled out for vilification.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

When you put it like that it's almost worrying. If the pants are being picked on because they're obviously bobbins, does that mean all the other products have the assessors fooled?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I dunno, maybe the BBC just thought (correctly!) that a caffeinated pants story would be funny.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

A bit like the way that when chiropractors claim to "treat" asthma, they're telling the God's honest truth. They don't make asthma any better, but they do *treat* it.

[lnr]

They sell those pants from size 10 to size 22. And while I can vaguely understand wanting to wear such a garment in order to look better in one particular dress for one particular event (although I wouldn't do so myself) I simply can't fathom the mindset that thinks a bit of crinkly skin on an otherwise slim body is so horrible it's worth squeezing yourself into such a constricting garment 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week for a whole month. It's heartbreaking, never mind the caffeine nonsense.

[metame.livejournal.com]

People do crazy thing for teh body-image fashionz, don't they. have been for a while...
See corsets, bodices, girdles etc for when it's worth squeezing yourself into such a constricting garment 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week for ever.

[lnr]

You may have noticed that those sort of garments have been very much out of fashion for a long time. I don't think it's a good step if they're coming back in!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

so horrible it's worth squeezing yourself into such a constricting garment 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week for a whole month.

Hear hear. Also when *I* wear garments that are constricting (e.g. flight socks on a plane), they leave nasty big red indentations, and leaves a big visible line with bulges either side and I really can't work out how that is supposed to be *more* attractive than cellulite.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have observed strange bulgy effects which I believe are the result of compression underwear (or "shapewear" as M&S has it). It is a risk.

I think the trick is to buy the more expensive varieties, where the garmet extends considerably past the area you wish to compress, with lessening tightness as it goes. So if you want squeezy pants to shape just your bum, they should go well down your thighs, and not be squeezy right up to the edges.

If you look at M&S' range online, lots of pants don't do this, but the effect is not obvious since in the pictures they're modelled by people who patently have little requirement for compression.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Hope is finally in sight for all those people with huge unsightly size 10 bums!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think that's a very damaging comment.

In particular, it just damaged my keyboard when I in advertently spat soup at it due to laughing :(

[lnr]

:)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I can vaguely understand wanting to wear such a garment in order to look better in one particular dress for one particular event

Yes. I have done this exactly once. It went something like this:

Need evening dress for wedding -> do not own evening dress -> buy evening dress -> put on weight -> discover two days before wedding that dress does not do up any more -> invest in compression hosiery.

My normal response to such an event would be to wear something different, but since the whole reason for shopping was that I didn't own anything else appropriate, I was a bit stuck for ideas :)

What I bought was basically a pair of tights whose top went up to under-bust level. They weren't actually uncomfortable at all, and had the desired effect. They were, however, only effective when on and didn't claim any lasting properties. And they weren't so much as tea-flavoured, never mind caffeinated.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Do they come in a decaf version? They really need to be thinking of all their clincher-worthy customers, not just caffeine-tolerant ones.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I think the caffeine is included solely to stimulate the pants, rather than the wearer. One wouldn't want to get up in the morning & pull on one's pants, expecting cinchage, but find that they hadn't woken up yet and one's arse was still a ginormous Size 10.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Even more disappointing if you bought them off the back of the BBC article and were expecting cLinchage.

M&S pants

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

I read the Which? report days ago and thought "Knickers to the whole thing."

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Hello! I have just connected you with yourself, as it were. I'm Clare, you connected me with myself at Whitby.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aha! Hello. I saw the LJ added-as-friend message before I saw this comment and was being quite confused as to who ceb was :)

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I love both you and this thread.

Am wondering if a tea-flavoured varient might be a good idea in case of emergencies. They could have 10,000 perforations in the gusset Just In Case.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Lets the flavour flood out ???

*boggles*