1.         Starve. Be a sizzling super model on a hunger strike. Not a crumb on your tongue. Not a sip past your lips.

2.         Depilate the lap. Clear cut below the belly button. Raze the Amazon. Go scorched earth Brazilian.  

3.         Dump baby powder down each scrawny pant leg. Shake it, baby, shake it!

4.         Naked from the navel down, lie tortilla flat on your back. And think of famine. Or Keira Knightley.

5.         Think thin. Think shrink. un-big.

6.         Feel hollow. Tuck your toes into those gangly, dangly jean legs, and slip your lower limbs south like twin garter snakes sliding through two mud holes.  

7.         Hook your thumbs into those blue belt loops. Like a suburban cowgirl leadin’ a heart-stompin’ techno-banjo line dance. 

8.         Yank tough. Haul hardcore. Heave hyper as a galley slave on Ecstasy. Have a fit for the perfect fit.

9.         Shimmy. Grind. You’re a pole dancer possessed at the devil’s peeler bar.    

10.       Bulging at the belt line? Squash those love handles. Mash that muffin top. Crush those burps of superfluous flesh.

11.        Clamp vise-grips to zipper. Lug pliers up! up! up! Total shock & awe tug o’ war. 

12.       Call on a higher power to hike those high-rise, baby blue jeans faster, stronger, higher.

P.S.     You have met the enemy. And the demon is not the denim.

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A failed fashion designer, Dan MacIsaac now accessorizes with stylish patois. His bling is words. Dan’s pieces for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar were ignored or rejected, but he has published short stories in a variety of literary magazines, including Stand, The Dalhousie Review, and Brittle Star. In 2017, Brick Books published his collection of poetry, Cries from the Ark.