My first thought after pulling these tiny shorts out of the bag was that there was no way in hell I'd be able to squeeze into them. They looked much narrower than the pair I tried on from Spanx, and I was a little nervous I'd rip them. Like the Spanx pair, these shorts had an elastic band around the top. The best part was that, despite offering "midlevel compression," I thought the shapewear smoothed out my belly nicely. The only downside was that because I'm only 5'2, these "mid-thigh" shorts came close to touching my knees.