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It's Not Easy Being Average
Would the real
size 10 please stand up? Shewire's Jennifer King laments the reality
of so-called standard sizes. |
by Jennifer
King | january 7, 2000
 I
despise shopping for clothes. It's fun for the first 30 minutes
before I actually try anything on. Then, in the dressing room, the
reject pile grows, despite that every piece is ostensibly labeled
with my "size." I storm out in a deep blue funk — once again, I've
wasted another day seeking a miracle: clothes that fit.
I'm
average. At least, that's what the government wants me to believe.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American woman is 5
feet, 4 inches tall and 142 pounds. At 5 foot 4 and one-quarter and
150 pounds (post Thanksgiving), I'm damn close.
Now, as an
Average American Woman, I'm supposed to be the norm and everyone
else the deviation. Clothes should fit me perfectly. Yeah, right.
It's a rare day when a sleeve doesn't reach my knuckles, a pant leg
doesn't brush the floor, or a pair of jeans in "my size" fail to
slide past my wide hips.
Of course, this is a slight
exaggeration. I do have things to wear — it's not as if I'm
forced to go naked or wear togas. But why does nothing fit me — or
anyone else, except tall, emaciated supermodels?
Part of the
answer lies in how sizes are created. Apparently, we delicate
females simply can't cope with seeing our real sizes, measured
precisely in inches, on our clothes. Thus, we have numeric sizes,
based upon the measurements of 10,000 female military members in
1942. Fifty-seven years later, we're all still wearing clothes sized
according to what many of our grandmothers wore — that is, if your
grandmother was primarily of European descent. It's no surprise that
these measurements have become practically obsolete as American
females have grown not only heavier, but also more ethnically
diverse.
To accommodate these changes, the numbers on the
sizing charts have shifted downwards to appease designer's desires
for vanity sizing — or, sizing clothes so that yesterday's size 16
is now a size 10 or 12. A good thing, since our delicate
constitutions make us less inclined to spend money on clothes when
we perceive that we're a higher and thus less desirable
size.
So, until someone is motivated to cover the cost of a
new sizing survey, designers cater to the "abnormal" market by
creating specialty sizes that are re-proportionments of the standard
size 8 (most designers create for a "perfect" size 8 on the misses'
2-16 sizing scale) for petites, tall and women's sizes. (Juniors'
sizes, 1-15, are cut for teenage girls, with narrower hips and a
slimmer profile than misses sizes.)
Ta-da! That's how it
works. Now, complicate the puzzle by adding designers that design
the cut of their clothing to fit certain body types (like the tall,
thin supermodel) and — Voila! We have a clothing
nightmare.
This is a practice that extends within a single
manufacturer's lines as well; for instance, while I can wear a size
10 at Old Navy, at the Gap, which owns Old Navy, I wear a 12. And
Levis? Anywhere from a 12 to a 16. Arrrgh!
Part of the
problem here is that you get what you pay for, particularly when it
comes to clothes. The cheaper the product, the less attention to
detail, from finish to fit. Why do you think superstars look so
great at the Oscars every year? Guaranteed, if those gowns weren't
handmade especially for them, at the minimum they were tailored for
a custom fit.
Imagine how great you would look if you had a
personal designer and tailor creating clothes designed to make you
look your best. I could have button-down shirts that didn't gape
open across my chest, pants that fit my hips and my waist,
and skirts that didn't fall three or four inches past my
knees.
But let's get real — short of spending money, I don't
have on high-end couture clothing. What can I do? I don't want to
spend $10 altering a $30 pair of jeans, let alone a $15 shirt. I'm
too busy to break out my sewing machine to do my own tailoring. And
since I live in cold, rainy San Francisco, there's no way in hell
I'm protesting by becoming a nudist.
What's really ironic is
that I know tall friends who wish they were my height, small friends
that wish they had my full-figure, and other "normal" friends, both
slimmer and heavier than I, who also have trouble finding anything
that fits at all.
But alas, until designers finally
acknowledge that "average" today is anything but average, at least
we'll all look lousy together!
Jennifer King is a
freelance writer and Web researcher living in Oakland, Calif., with
her pet cat, Mars, and her pet husband, Adam. In her free time, she
enjoys subverting the dominant paradigm and dreaming up ideas for
her soon-to-be-developed Webzine, Knowitallgirl.
Your Take
What are your sizable clothing
dilemmas?
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