Review: Avon Super Shape Anti-Cellulite & Stretch Mark Cream
I gave birth for the first time as a scared teenager in a cold metal bed. I gave birth the second time at 20 years old, with a dreadlocked midwife at my side as I squatted against my bedroom's parquet floor. I gave birth again at 22, another hippy midwife rubbing my back, another sloppy apartment, another tiny baby to feed and clothe with no money, nothing but endless time and pathological optimism. My body bounced back, didn't look different than it did at 15, really, after three kids. I still rocked string bikinis in my backyard while I lounged on folding lounge chairs, toddlers naked under a grass-flooding sprinkler.
The year I turned 29 everything changed. I spent my birthday eight months pregnant with number four, my belly distended to a phenomenal distance, my back weary and sore. My feet swelled two sizes. I cursed my pregnancy, wished it over, please God over. But the fates laughed, made me carry my son two, almost three weeks beyond the calculated distance as my tummy grew and grew and grew.
I didn't know my stomach mapped an interstate highway, a heaving spiral galaxy, a universe of crack-edged stars. I didn't know this as I plodded through my apartment, didn't know it the moment of his birth, when my midwife held him high, declared him eleven pounds, as I looked at his father and demanded something to eat. I didn't know until three weeks later, when I stood in front of a full length mirror and stared at my unfamiliar body, tired skin marked with nine months of hard history, nine months of collection, of cellular division, of gentle monster creation. How could my body let me down, I thought? How could it?
Eleven years later I still carry those marks. They've faded to silver, to memory, and years of exercise and cocoa butter and vitamin E haven't done a damn sorry thing. I'm no different than my sisters, than my friends, than millions of women with children and pets and wistful dreams. I have stretch marks. I have stretch marks! And not only that - as time pushed me from 29 to 40 I developed a small bit of cellulite, too. I still wear bikinis and run through backyard sprinklers. The marks of a life lived fully don't stop me from feeling sexy, hell, from looking or being sexy. I keep in good shape. I like to run, to walk, to swim and bike and climb. But, to be honest, if Avon developed a product that erased them, I would certainly use it! My rejection of cultural conditioning only goes so far.
So, with my customary glee, I ordered the advance pack of Avon's new Super Shape Anti-Cellulite & Stretch Mark Cream and hoped for the best. The advertising, like all other celebrated Avon products, greeted me with incredible fanfare. "Our first dual action cream to target and visibly diminish the appearance of cellulite and stretch marks." "Skin renewal acid to help improve the appearance of older stretch marks." "Butea flower extract to help new stretch marks appear less visible." The literature sports a perfect panty-bottomed butt with the word "cellulite" imprinted on one thigh. I stared at the rounded cheeks, at the taught thighs. What cellulite? Another photo of a slim, toned and stretch mark-free tummy sits below the wondrous ass. The little person who caused my stretch marks, my son, now 11, caught me staring at the brochure.
"Uh, Mom? Shouldn't the butt be under the belly and not the other way around?"
He has a point.
Avon Super Shape costs $16.50 and comes in a generous 6.7 ounce squeeze tube similar to Avon ReFine and Avon Cellu-Sculpt. In fact, if you peruse the list of ingredients for these similar items, you will find many of the same components designed to pull and pinch and erase and plump and firm. As an Avon Lady, I'm not sure exactly which product or combination of products to recommend to a customer with a flabby attitude.
The day the product arrived, I opened the tube and inhaled. The smell is not what I'd call offensive, but it sure isn't pleasant, either. It has the same hidden chemical odor as Cellu-Sculpt that slightly irritates my nose, with more gentle overtones of rose and cinnamon. The color of the cream is a light golden beige. I rubbed and massaged it, as recommended, into my thighs, butt, and tummy. It melts into the skin easily and leaves it feeling soft and supple. I could feel an instant tingle as the product slightly tightened my epidermis. The sensation lasts but a moment, and a couple hours later, any initial tightening is sadly gone, a figment of beauty imagination.
I used the Avon Super Shape faithfully - morning and night as instructed - for a full seven weeks, until I was squeezing bare molecules from the tube. I ate well, too, lots of veggies and fruits and lean protein, drank a boat load 'o water. I exercised, meditated, did everything good and healthy for my body that I could. But in all those weeks, I didn't see any real, lasting effects from Super Shape. My stretch marks have not faded or smoothed. My cellulite laughs at me, waves along the top of my thighs as if brushing my ideas of extreme beauty far, far away. On the plus side, my skin is softer, and perhaps a teeny tiny bit firmer in the areas deluged with Super Shape.
To be completely truthful, I do not recommend this product. I, and my customers, are seeing better results with Avon Lift and Tuck, which costs a little bit more than Super Shape but is worth the extra pennies. I even traded one unhappy customer her used tube of Super Shape for several other Avon products she liked better. It's just not living up to the hoopla, at least in my experience and in that of my customers.
What bothers me more than a useless product, however, is the way that I felt when I first read the Avon news that Super Shape would soon appear, the way I felt when I look at the pretty woman in the panties. I wanted it to work, wanted to look like 15, like new, like the smooth vixen women I see in magazines, like the women we women expect ourselves to be. What kind of attitude is that? If Super Shape gave me anything, it's the gift of reexamining who I am, what wonders I've produced with this crazy body, the ability to see myself with new eyes and to love every wrinkle and tear. Yeah, I'm 40, and I have kids! Bring on the next 40 years, baby! I'm ready.
My sexy swim suit butt cellulite!
Before and after Super Shape, it's all the same.
8:56:54 PM 
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