Small, Medium and Large: How Clothes Make Us Crazy.
1: Hello, My Name Is...
Hello, my name is Seanan, and I'm a size 6. I mean, 10. I mean, 8 1/2. I mean, 12. I mean 36D. I mean...
Hello, my name is Seanan, and I think we have a problem.
For most of my life, I haven't been what you would term a particularly 'small' girl. Even when I was skinny, I was generally abnormally tall for my age (I hit 5'4" by the time I was eleven -- not huge for an adult, but for elementary school? I was a Tolkein elf...), and dance classes and an addiction to running around hollering at the top of my lungs meant that I had legs that rarely fit in jeans designed to fit my waist. After a back injury at the age of twelve, I grew another three inches up and a whole lotta inches around, topping out at 5'7" and 254 pounds. Because of the way I carry weight, this wasn't a very good, or healthy, look for me (especially considering my grandmother's multiple heart attacks) and I joined Weight Watchers a little over two years ago.
Prior to starting Weight Watchers, I'd never really given much thought to clothing sizes. I shopped, after all, exclusively in the 'fat girl' section of any given store. The idea of being able to just walk into Target for a pack of panties, or find the Hot Topic shirt I wanted in an appropriate size, was a misty, far-off dream. Not because I was too big; because the clothing sizes were too damn small. (In the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, one of the characters notes that women who believe themselves to be a size 10 will often refuse to buy anything at all once they discover that they're actually a 12, but will buy things that make them look like sausage casings if the label bears the magical number '8'. This is because clothing manufacturers are fucking with us.) If it fit, I bought it, and I really didn't give a damn what the tag said.
As I started losing weight, I started paying more attention to clothing sizes, both because they were suddenly a measure of how well I was doing -- if the numbers went down, my efforts were paying off; if they went up, maybe I needed to reconsider some of my nutritional choices -- but the fact that they were essentially meaningless really didn't register for me, because I was still in the realms of stretchy, forgiving fabrics, denim, and the ever-beloved 'T-shirt with witty slogan on the front'. I needed nothing more from my clothing, and nothing more was offered.
Then, on an otherwise uneventful day, my world shifted on its axis...because I suddenly dropped from the 'plus size' section of the store into the 'standard size' section of the store. In 'plus', I was one of the smallest people there. In 'standard', well, it was like I'd never changed at all...except that the labels on the clothing suddenly made no sense.
Where was the comforting conformity of S, M, L, and XL in its many numeric incarnations? Where was the elastic? And what the hell did 'size 14' have to do with my waistline? Nothing about it equaled fourteen. It didn't divide by fourteen. It didn't multiply by fourteen. It definitely wasn't fourteen inches around. (I don't really know how many inches around I was at that point, having never been much of one for measuring tapes, but since I'm several continents and a ribcage away from a fourteen-inch waist now, I definitely didn't have one thirty pounds ago.)
I attempted, at the time, to find salesclerks who could explain what the heck all of this was supposed to mean. They just shrugged and said that was the way it was. Some suggested I go back to plus size, where I would 'have an easier time' finding things. Uh, sure, except that nothing there fit anymore. I had entered the clothing sizes Twilight Zone, too small to be a happy fat chick, too big to fit any of the clothing that was supposedly 'my size'.
Lucky, lucky me.
I began getting faintly neurotic about sizes, not only because I didn't understand them, but because they were so damn random. At the time, I was still primarily shopping at Ross Dress For Less (your one-stop shop for those pesky 'my pants start falling off every six weeks, dammit' clothing needs), and I found that on the same rack, I would wear everything from size 16 to size 12, with no apparent rhyme or reason. I found skin-tight 16s and excessively baggy 12s. I spent a lot of time looking confused. Not a good position to be in, and it was just going to get worse...
2: Vanity Size Me.
Have you ever encountered vanity sizing? No? Well, it's the practice of making your clothing 'more appealing' by making the number on the label up to two full sizes smaller than the actual size of the clothing. Wanna feel slim and chic? With vanity sizing, you can go from a size 12 to a size 8 in just one pull of the zipper! Ignore the fact that you'll pay for that moment of 'oh I am so skinny oh look at meeeeeeee' with years of angst as you go to other stores and suddenly feel like you've gained thirty pounds. Ignore the damage you'll do to clothing in those other stores as you burst the seams in your valiant battle to prove that no, really, you're a size 8. Ignore the fact that you'd look better, and probably slimmer, in clothing that actually fits. None of that matters, because there's an 8 on your label.
Does anybody else see how stupid this is? Seriously, here. You cannot tell by looking at me what size clothing I'm wearing on any given part of my body -- so what's the damn point of turning the number on the label into a federal case? If my jeans say '14' and look better on me than the ones that say '10', I'm buying the ones with the higher number. If I'm that worried about somebody seeing that horrible, terrible, no-good number -- and dude, '14' is not a bad number; sorry, but some of the sexiest ladies I know wear that size -- isn't it better for me to use my sewing scissors to remove the tag from a pair of pants that actually fit than it is to force myself into pants that are just plain too small?
What does vanity sizing give us? The camel toe. The muffin top. And lots and lots of eating disorders inspired by the fact that 'oh I was a size 6 yesterday, what happened, no, no, I can't eat a bite'. Thanks, but yeah, no.
Vanity sizing also gives us the bane of all sane women: size 0. Um, what? Size what? Do you have mass? Do you have volume? Do you have more than one dimension? Then yes, your pants have a size. And we're not even talking about 'size 00', the size that claims black holes are sexy. How are you doing anyone a favor by wishing them into size 0 pants? And how are you doing my seven year old niece a favor by showing her skeletons in Calvin Klein, telling her that real, attractive, desireable women wear pants that can double as event horizons? Cut. It. Out.
There is no reason in this world for vanity sizing, save for feeding the constant, neurotic belief that thin is in, thin is sexy, and nothing but thin will ever be acceptable, so here's a sop for your battling desires for beauty and for cheesecake. Dude, cut it out. No amount of bulimia is ever going to give a farmer's daughter the kind of hips that fit into size 0 pants. There's bone in the way. No amount of anorexia is ever going to give a singer the sort of ribcage that fits into a size 0 dress. Again, meet our friend, Mister Basic Human Anatomy. So what this does is give perfectly normal, functional, beautiful women yet another reason to feel fat and ugly -- the very existence of size 0 implies that there's something wrong with them.
(The fact that 'fat and ugly' seem to be goals of the fashion industry half the time makes me semi-homicidal. I know beautiful women of every possible size, shape, and build. I also know ugly women of every possible size, shape, and build. Being thin doesn't make you innately beautiful; being too thin turns you into a scary pinchy mantis woman who looks like she's considering the nutritional benefits of bathing in my blood. Do not want. But that's the message -- Nicole Kidman wears a size 2! Why don't you?! And all across the land, women who already need to eat a damn sandwich starve themselves for vanity sizing...)
Men don't have vanity sizing. This is because men have clothing that actually uses human measurements as a guideline. Have a thirty-two inch waist? Buy size 32 pants. And so on. Dude, what genius thought of this? Because when you compare it to the clunky, pointless, bug-ridden system used for sizing women's clothing, it's seriously like watching the industrial revolution unfolding in cotton, denim, and a variety of novelty prints. Clothing sizes can be honest. And maybe if they were, we could convince some of these people to eat something already.
3: Stacy and Clinton Want a Word.
Whether clothing is subject to vanity sizing or not, the message is given to us loud and clear, every day, every time we see a movie that involves women trying on clothes or look through a catalogue: smaller is better. If you can make that size 10 zip, then by-God, you should do exactly that, because if you buy the size 12, well, everyone in the world will know, and no one will want to talk to you, or be your friend, or have sex with you, ever again. You chose big over small. How dare you.
Only, see, here's the thing. When you buy pants that are too small for you? They pinch at the waist and pull upwards at the crotch, creating unflattering effects with the unflattering names of 'muffin top' and 'camel toe'. I'm sure you've seen them. Heck, you may even have displayed them -- I know I have. And what does this do? Well, for one, it makes you look heavier. That's right, I said it. Vanity sizing, which is there to make you feel smaller, makes you look bigger, thus perpetrating a cycle that started with the phrase 'fat girls aren't worth loving'.
Buy pants that fit! You'll present a more shapely figure, no matter what size you are, and that's going to make you look better. Am I promising you roses and secret trysts and serenades beneath your window? No. But I am telling you that wearing clothing that fits you will make you more attractive almost instantly, because it won't be pinching and straining to keep you contained. A good pair of pants can make any size look like a million bucks.
Buy tops that fit! Yes, I realize the tag in that sweater says 'small', and you've been that size since high school, that's great, I get it. That doesn't change the fact that if the sweater makes you look like a stuffed sausage, it doesn't actually fit you. It, in fact, doesn't fit you. Putting on a top that does fit will bring the win to the lottery of your looks, rather than bringing yet another five-dollar scratcher that mysteriously fails to score.
Underthings are harder, both because, well, trying them on is a bit more difficult, and because there's no uniform sizing scheme. At Victoria's Secret, I'm a medium. At Target or K-Mart, I'm a 6. These things do not have anything in common; they were discovered via trial and error (lots of trial, lots of errors). But the thing is? I am infinitely more comfy in my undies when they neither fall off nor attempt to go spelunking. If your thong isn't a small? No one cares but you, and I assure you, when you realize that half your time at the club is no longer spent trying to figure out how to dig it politely out of your nethers, neither will you.
Also? The bra. Most women wear bras that don't fit them. I've been guilty of this myself, because, well, bras are expensive, and I'm not always willing to buy new ones just because my size has shifted. But y'know what? A good bra, one that fits you properly, will make you look ten years younger and ten pounds lighter, just because it shifts everything back to where it belongs. Also, your back will feel better and you will no longer look like an extra from an early eighties teen comedy when you run. Go to the mall, go to any store that sells bras, and request your free fitting. You will be amazed by the results.
It's not the size of your clothing that matters, it's the way it fits you and how it makes you feel. And yet the fashion industry, and the media, insist that we have to judge size first, everything else later. Size 6 or bust, baby!
I have a bust. Size 6 can bite me.
4: Shame and Blame.
It seems to me that there's a huge amount of shame-and-blame being handed around regarding women having body image issues. Well, gee. Does the fact that clothing is cut to fit 'the median' woman, when most of us aren't her, sized unrealistically, trumpeted with those unrealistic sizes attached like there was something desireable about being too thin to menstruate, and shilled for by women whose hips you could use to slice cheese have anything to do with it? If you try to dress like Nicole Richey, well, one, I feel sorry for you, but two, you're gonna look fat. Doesn't matter whether you are or not, you're gonna look that way. And since that same sizing pyramid makes fat more and more shameful every year, pushing it further and further towards the back of the store, many women will then feel bad about themselves, and the cycle will continue.
When I started Weight Watchers, I was a size 26. Now I'm a size 10. And I found myself feeling bad because I've been a size 10 for sooooooo long, and when will I be a size 8, and...
...and then I slapped myself and ate some candy corn.
Maybe we can't change the fashion industry. Maybe we can. But we can change ourselves. So ignore size; shop for fit, look fabulous, and say 'fuck you' to the vanity sizers. I don't want to live in a black hole.
And my pants fit just fine.
Hello, my name is Seanan, and I'm a size 6. I mean, 10. I mean, 8 1/2. I mean, 12. I mean 36D. I mean...
Hello, my name is Seanan, and I think we have a problem.
For most of my life, I haven't been what you would term a particularly 'small' girl. Even when I was skinny, I was generally abnormally tall for my age (I hit 5'4" by the time I was eleven -- not huge for an adult, but for elementary school? I was a Tolkein elf...), and dance classes and an addiction to running around hollering at the top of my lungs meant that I had legs that rarely fit in jeans designed to fit my waist. After a back injury at the age of twelve, I grew another three inches up and a whole lotta inches around, topping out at 5'7" and 254 pounds. Because of the way I carry weight, this wasn't a very good, or healthy, look for me (especially considering my grandmother's multiple heart attacks) and I joined Weight Watchers a little over two years ago.
Prior to starting Weight Watchers, I'd never really given much thought to clothing sizes. I shopped, after all, exclusively in the 'fat girl' section of any given store. The idea of being able to just walk into Target for a pack of panties, or find the Hot Topic shirt I wanted in an appropriate size, was a misty, far-off dream. Not because I was too big; because the clothing sizes were too damn small. (In the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, one of the characters notes that women who believe themselves to be a size 10 will often refuse to buy anything at all once they discover that they're actually a 12, but will buy things that make them look like sausage casings if the label bears the magical number '8'. This is because clothing manufacturers are fucking with us.) If it fit, I bought it, and I really didn't give a damn what the tag said.
As I started losing weight, I started paying more attention to clothing sizes, both because they were suddenly a measure of how well I was doing -- if the numbers went down, my efforts were paying off; if they went up, maybe I needed to reconsider some of my nutritional choices -- but the fact that they were essentially meaningless really didn't register for me, because I was still in the realms of stretchy, forgiving fabrics, denim, and the ever-beloved 'T-shirt with witty slogan on the front'. I needed nothing more from my clothing, and nothing more was offered.
Then, on an otherwise uneventful day, my world shifted on its axis...because I suddenly dropped from the 'plus size' section of the store into the 'standard size' section of the store. In 'plus', I was one of the smallest people there. In 'standard', well, it was like I'd never changed at all...except that the labels on the clothing suddenly made no sense.
Where was the comforting conformity of S, M, L, and XL in its many numeric incarnations? Where was the elastic? And what the hell did 'size 14' have to do with my waistline? Nothing about it equaled fourteen. It didn't divide by fourteen. It didn't multiply by fourteen. It definitely wasn't fourteen inches around. (I don't really know how many inches around I was at that point, having never been much of one for measuring tapes, but since I'm several continents and a ribcage away from a fourteen-inch waist now, I definitely didn't have one thirty pounds ago.)
I attempted, at the time, to find salesclerks who could explain what the heck all of this was supposed to mean. They just shrugged and said that was the way it was. Some suggested I go back to plus size, where I would 'have an easier time' finding things. Uh, sure, except that nothing there fit anymore. I had entered the clothing sizes Twilight Zone, too small to be a happy fat chick, too big to fit any of the clothing that was supposedly 'my size'.
Lucky, lucky me.
I began getting faintly neurotic about sizes, not only because I didn't understand them, but because they were so damn random. At the time, I was still primarily shopping at Ross Dress For Less (your one-stop shop for those pesky 'my pants start falling off every six weeks, dammit' clothing needs), and I found that on the same rack, I would wear everything from size 16 to size 12, with no apparent rhyme or reason. I found skin-tight 16s and excessively baggy 12s. I spent a lot of time looking confused. Not a good position to be in, and it was just going to get worse...
2: Vanity Size Me.
Have you ever encountered vanity sizing? No? Well, it's the practice of making your clothing 'more appealing' by making the number on the label up to two full sizes smaller than the actual size of the clothing. Wanna feel slim and chic? With vanity sizing, you can go from a size 12 to a size 8 in just one pull of the zipper! Ignore the fact that you'll pay for that moment of 'oh I am so skinny oh look at meeeeeeee' with years of angst as you go to other stores and suddenly feel like you've gained thirty pounds. Ignore the damage you'll do to clothing in those other stores as you burst the seams in your valiant battle to prove that no, really, you're a size 8. Ignore the fact that you'd look better, and probably slimmer, in clothing that actually fits. None of that matters, because there's an 8 on your label.
Does anybody else see how stupid this is? Seriously, here. You cannot tell by looking at me what size clothing I'm wearing on any given part of my body -- so what's the damn point of turning the number on the label into a federal case? If my jeans say '14' and look better on me than the ones that say '10', I'm buying the ones with the higher number. If I'm that worried about somebody seeing that horrible, terrible, no-good number -- and dude, '14' is not a bad number; sorry, but some of the sexiest ladies I know wear that size -- isn't it better for me to use my sewing scissors to remove the tag from a pair of pants that actually fit than it is to force myself into pants that are just plain too small?
What does vanity sizing give us? The camel toe. The muffin top. And lots and lots of eating disorders inspired by the fact that 'oh I was a size 6 yesterday, what happened, no, no, I can't eat a bite'. Thanks, but yeah, no.
Vanity sizing also gives us the bane of all sane women: size 0. Um, what? Size what? Do you have mass? Do you have volume? Do you have more than one dimension? Then yes, your pants have a size. And we're not even talking about 'size 00', the size that claims black holes are sexy. How are you doing anyone a favor by wishing them into size 0 pants? And how are you doing my seven year old niece a favor by showing her skeletons in Calvin Klein, telling her that real, attractive, desireable women wear pants that can double as event horizons? Cut. It. Out.
There is no reason in this world for vanity sizing, save for feeding the constant, neurotic belief that thin is in, thin is sexy, and nothing but thin will ever be acceptable, so here's a sop for your battling desires for beauty and for cheesecake. Dude, cut it out. No amount of bulimia is ever going to give a farmer's daughter the kind of hips that fit into size 0 pants. There's bone in the way. No amount of anorexia is ever going to give a singer the sort of ribcage that fits into a size 0 dress. Again, meet our friend, Mister Basic Human Anatomy. So what this does is give perfectly normal, functional, beautiful women yet another reason to feel fat and ugly -- the very existence of size 0 implies that there's something wrong with them.
(The fact that 'fat and ugly' seem to be goals of the fashion industry half the time makes me semi-homicidal. I know beautiful women of every possible size, shape, and build. I also know ugly women of every possible size, shape, and build. Being thin doesn't make you innately beautiful; being too thin turns you into a scary pinchy mantis woman who looks like she's considering the nutritional benefits of bathing in my blood. Do not want. But that's the message -- Nicole Kidman wears a size 2! Why don't you?! And all across the land, women who already need to eat a damn sandwich starve themselves for vanity sizing...)
Men don't have vanity sizing. This is because men have clothing that actually uses human measurements as a guideline. Have a thirty-two inch waist? Buy size 32 pants. And so on. Dude, what genius thought of this? Because when you compare it to the clunky, pointless, bug-ridden system used for sizing women's clothing, it's seriously like watching the industrial revolution unfolding in cotton, denim, and a variety of novelty prints. Clothing sizes can be honest. And maybe if they were, we could convince some of these people to eat something already.
3: Stacy and Clinton Want a Word.
Whether clothing is subject to vanity sizing or not, the message is given to us loud and clear, every day, every time we see a movie that involves women trying on clothes or look through a catalogue: smaller is better. If you can make that size 10 zip, then by-God, you should do exactly that, because if you buy the size 12, well, everyone in the world will know, and no one will want to talk to you, or be your friend, or have sex with you, ever again. You chose big over small. How dare you.
Only, see, here's the thing. When you buy pants that are too small for you? They pinch at the waist and pull upwards at the crotch, creating unflattering effects with the unflattering names of 'muffin top' and 'camel toe'. I'm sure you've seen them. Heck, you may even have displayed them -- I know I have. And what does this do? Well, for one, it makes you look heavier. That's right, I said it. Vanity sizing, which is there to make you feel smaller, makes you look bigger, thus perpetrating a cycle that started with the phrase 'fat girls aren't worth loving'.
Buy pants that fit! You'll present a more shapely figure, no matter what size you are, and that's going to make you look better. Am I promising you roses and secret trysts and serenades beneath your window? No. But I am telling you that wearing clothing that fits you will make you more attractive almost instantly, because it won't be pinching and straining to keep you contained. A good pair of pants can make any size look like a million bucks.
Buy tops that fit! Yes, I realize the tag in that sweater says 'small', and you've been that size since high school, that's great, I get it. That doesn't change the fact that if the sweater makes you look like a stuffed sausage, it doesn't actually fit you. It, in fact, doesn't fit you. Putting on a top that does fit will bring the win to the lottery of your looks, rather than bringing yet another five-dollar scratcher that mysteriously fails to score.
Underthings are harder, both because, well, trying them on is a bit more difficult, and because there's no uniform sizing scheme. At Victoria's Secret, I'm a medium. At Target or K-Mart, I'm a 6. These things do not have anything in common; they were discovered via trial and error (lots of trial, lots of errors). But the thing is? I am infinitely more comfy in my undies when they neither fall off nor attempt to go spelunking. If your thong isn't a small? No one cares but you, and I assure you, when you realize that half your time at the club is no longer spent trying to figure out how to dig it politely out of your nethers, neither will you.
Also? The bra. Most women wear bras that don't fit them. I've been guilty of this myself, because, well, bras are expensive, and I'm not always willing to buy new ones just because my size has shifted. But y'know what? A good bra, one that fits you properly, will make you look ten years younger and ten pounds lighter, just because it shifts everything back to where it belongs. Also, your back will feel better and you will no longer look like an extra from an early eighties teen comedy when you run. Go to the mall, go to any store that sells bras, and request your free fitting. You will be amazed by the results.
It's not the size of your clothing that matters, it's the way it fits you and how it makes you feel. And yet the fashion industry, and the media, insist that we have to judge size first, everything else later. Size 6 or bust, baby!
I have a bust. Size 6 can bite me.
4: Shame and Blame.
It seems to me that there's a huge amount of shame-and-blame being handed around regarding women having body image issues. Well, gee. Does the fact that clothing is cut to fit 'the median' woman, when most of us aren't her, sized unrealistically, trumpeted with those unrealistic sizes attached like there was something desireable about being too thin to menstruate, and shilled for by women whose hips you could use to slice cheese have anything to do with it? If you try to dress like Nicole Richey, well, one, I feel sorry for you, but two, you're gonna look fat. Doesn't matter whether you are or not, you're gonna look that way. And since that same sizing pyramid makes fat more and more shameful every year, pushing it further and further towards the back of the store, many women will then feel bad about themselves, and the cycle will continue.
When I started Weight Watchers, I was a size 26. Now I'm a size 10. And I found myself feeling bad because I've been a size 10 for sooooooo long, and when will I be a size 8, and...
...and then I slapped myself and ate some candy corn.
Maybe we can't change the fashion industry. Maybe we can. But we can change ourselves. So ignore size; shop for fit, look fabulous, and say 'fuck you' to the vanity sizers. I don't want to live in a black hole.
And my pants fit just fine.