How to Pee in a Bodysuit, According to Professionals
Bodysuits answer the age-old question: What if your thong stayed in place by looping around your neck? But a second question inevitably remains: How are we supposed to pee while wearing one?
A bodysuit is a skintight, leotard-style one-piece. It covers the wearer’s crotch, either seamlessly like a swimsuit, or with snaps, like a baby’s onesie. The bodysuit may include shorts, it may include sleeves, it may have neither. It is a tube that receives the body, as a pitcher receives cool water.
Bodysuits are not a new trend—they emerged in the 1940s and were popularized among non-ballet dancers during the 1970s—but they currently have us in a chokehold. Every woman celebrity wears bodysuits, and wears them regularly: Jennifers Aniston and Lopez, Meghan Markle, Gigi and Bella, Kendall and Kylie and Khloe. The following stars wore bodysuits at the 2021 Met gala: Serena Williams, Ella Emhoff, Olivia Rodrigo, and Lil Nas X. Rihanna’s Fenty, Beyoncé’s Ivy Park, and Kim Kardashian's Skims all lean heavily on bodysuits. Cool-girl clothing site Revolve has five times more entries for “bodysuit” than it does for “skirt.” Bodysuits with intricate cutouts are all but inescapable on influencers and street style stars.
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It’s easy to see why. Bodysuits are sexy. “I feel held in, I feel sexier, I feel like I can move around more,” says Norma Kamali, the iconic designer who helped popularize bodysuits in the ’70s and ’80s. “It just feels good.” If they fit well, bodysuits cannot wrinkle, bunch, untuck, go limp. You can wear them to a workout class or a business meeting. A bodysuit is a fast pass to the holy grail of modern dress: the elusive state of looking “put together.”
“You might think that wardrobe that fits snugly to your body would make you more uncomfortable,” says stylist Laurie Brucker, “but when you kind of feel that sucked-in feeling, it helps you to feel secure.” A great bodysuit makes you feel like you could be president of these United States. Perhaps that is why they are the outfit of choice for pop stars, superheroes, and Olympic gymnasts.
How to (really) pee in a bodysuit
But even superheroes and pop stars have to pee. And the question, in a bodysuit, is: How? This really happened to me in the course of writing this article: I went on a date in a bodysuit. We went into a café, and I entered the single-stall bathroom. Inside I peed quickly. Then I spent what felt like several slow hours furiously trying to resnap my bodysuit over my crotch. I was sweating, shaking, performing a wildly impromptu gynecological examination on myself. When I stepped outside the bathroom, wild-eyed, my date was standing there. So were four women who had formed a line in the time I had been trying to snap my bodysuit.
