The vanity sizing myth
When I was 22, I loved going to the Apple Fitness Center and working out, particularly with weights. I’m not sure what it is I responded to so well about weights, but I’ve always liked working with them. I didn’t think I was going to become extremely slim—didn’t think it was possible, actually—but I thought I could become really buff. I used to measure myself all the time to see what differences weightlifting was making in my body.
(The fact that I thought was kinda puffy and fat? Makes me want to go back in time and throttle that girl so hard I could scream. The fact that the Apple Fitness Center told the 130 lb. me that really, for my height and build, I ought to weigh 120? Makes me actually scream.)
I was a size 8 in everything. If I needed to buy clothes, I always immediately headed for the size 8s and the Mediums. I remember being surprised when I needed to get new pants and I got the size 6s.
My measurements back then?
Chest: 88 cm (oh yes, I was going to train myself to use centimeters back then) 34.6 in.
Waist: 26.8 in.
Hips: (actually measured at hipbones—who knew you were supposed to measure lower down?) 33.85 in.
Thigh: 21.85 in.
Calf: 13.18 in.
As I said in the previous entry, I’ve lost 30 pounds recently and I am planning on a few more besides. During my recent shopping expeditions, I’ve discovered that I am at least a size 8 at every place I’ve tried on clothing, and often have been size 6, and today I managed to snag my second size 4 denim skirt (this time at the Gap, woot!). My current measurements?
Chest: 35 in.
Waist: 29.5 in
Hips: 34.75 in.
Thigh: 23.5 in.
Calf: 14 in.
(And while everything else has gone down, sometimes dramatically, my calf size has not changed at all since I started this weight loss journey. TOTALLY UNFAIR.)
But…but…how can that be? How can I be a smaller size now when I am clearly larger than I was many years and 18 pounds ago?
The answer that many people give me is: Vanity sizing.
To which I say: Not so much.
“Vanity sizing” is the term many people give to the fact that clothing sizes today seem to be grossly inflated over their counterparts for yesteryear, yet the numbers haven’t changed. Why else would a woman who’s bigger than her 22 year old self be able to fit into smaller clothes?
There are lots of good explanations of this on the Web. Here’s a particularly cogent one, nicely entitled The Myth of Vanity Sizing, which includes many links to discussions of the topic. The short answer is: Sizes are simply a reflection of the customer base for that manufacturer. A “medium” is the middle size, and the small and large sizes are derived from that. Most of the customers for a brand are going to hit the Medium size (or size 10? 12? I can’t remember what’s considered exact medium). So when trying to gauge sizes, a manufacturer brings in a couple of hundred women in their target market, takes their measurements, figures out what the medium of that is, and makes patterns accordingly.
If you want to blame anyone for grade inflation when it comes to clothing sizes, take a look in the mirror: it’s the American public.
(It does sound like women who are very tiny are really having a hard time of it—there aren’t enough of them to make it worth most manufacturers time to design clothes for them. Perhaps there is a marketing niche some designers need to aim for: ready-to-wear sizes beyond 0 and 00.)
One response often given when discussing the unfairness of clothing sizes is, “Why can’t we do what men do and measure things by waist + in-seam, or by inches, or whatever?” And the fact of the matter is, you still wouldn’t be able to find anything directly in your size. Women’s bodies tend to be somewhat more varied than men’s, I think—the stick who still has a large chest, the curvy girl, or everyone’s favorite, the one whose top and bottom vary by 3 sizes or more. A manufacturer can’t possibly make enough garments to cover all of those possibilities, so you’d still be buying the dress that’s much too large for the rest of you simply to fit over your thighs.
And now you know why I don’t wear pencil skirts. I can’t find one that fits both my waist (which tends to be tiny) and my thighs (which tend…not).
“(It does sound like women who are very tiny are really having a hard time of it?there aren?t enough of them to make it worth most manufacturers time to design clothes for them. Perhaps there is a marketing niche some designers need to aim for: ready-to-wear sizes beyond 0 and 00.)”
Thank you for finally recognizing that this is, in fact an issue as well! While everyone else is bemoaning the addition of a size 00 to bebe’s sizing range, I was exulting in the fact that the total number of mall clothing stores where I could buy off the rack had now doubled to 2.
The British Standards Institute has drafted a standard calling for a pictogram with actual measurements in centimeters. That’s right, centimeters! This is to be understandable worldwide. Work began in 1996, and was ready for publication in 2003. A few countries have the new size labels right now. I could understand why the USA does not use the new labels. Most Americans do not routinely use metric, and don’t want their measurements staring in their faces. Many would be terrified by the resulting big numbers. I have been fully ready for the new labels as early as 1983, somewhat ready in 1975.
This has become a BIG issue with smaller women (even medium-size women!). When we walk into our favorite stores and can no longer find anything to fit…something is going on, and it’s not good.
I’ve been frustrated & angry when even a size 4 is too big. Most stores carry only down to a size 4, so I’m out of luck.
I’m tired of carrying armloads of clothing into the dressing room – does this manufacturer vanity-size; do they not vanity-size? It’s a guessing game nowdays.
People are not fooled by the false sizing. It has only made most customers angry, especially women who used to wear a small size. Now they have NOTHING to choose from!
It’s not false sizing. There’s no platonic ideal of a size 4 or a size 8 or what have you—it’s all based on relative population sizes, and the average size for an American woman has ballooned outward in the past 10 years, and even more so over the past 20-30.
A friend of mine who wears sizes 4-6 in upscale mass market brands like Banana Republic has recently gotten into “vintage” pattern making (with patterns from the 50s, heh). She’s discovered she was a size 14 in 1950s sizes.
We’ve grown a LOT.
Diane, the 1950s sizes have nothing to do with modern sizes. Read more on that topic at Fashion Incubator (the article “The Myth of Vanity Sizing,” linked to above, has details).
Tell me about it. I am 61 years old and have decades of first hand experience of sizes getting bigger and bigger. Not good so someone who is “tiny”. In my 20s I was barely 5’2″ and 100 lbs. I was a size 5 back then. Over the decades, I put on just 5 lbs over 40 years, yet I have gone from size 5, to a 3, to a 1, to now a size 0. I used to joke about 10 years ago that if they kept making these clothes any bigger, I would be shopping for clothes with my Social Security check in the KID’S section. It’s not funny anymore because it’s coming true.
You know what? Amercian women are just plain FAT. Maybe I should move to Europe.