mrissa | Someone to blame

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Someone to blame

I've seen lots of people link to this entry, the one about the Size 6 Harem. It frustrates me immensely, because the person who reposted it says in a comment that she believes the story literally, that the writer went to a large department store and was told they didn't sell skirts as large as a 14 or a 16 and focused 4s and 6s. And I call bullshit. Show me the "large American department store" that doesn't stock skirts in 14s or 16s, and I will show you the empty building with the tumbleweed blowing through it. Every large American department store I've ever seen has had a "plus sizes" section that went larger than a 16 -- and no, I'm not claiming that the larger sizes are stocked well or even adequately, but I am claiming that it's absolutely ridiculous to claim they're not there at all, if you're talking about a 14 or a 16 as a "larger size." (Which it isn't: I forget whether the average American woman wears a 12 or a 14, but it's one of the two. I think it's high time to recenter the norm and add on a "small women's department" in addition to the "large women's department," because they're calling things large that are average. But they're stocking at least some of them, is the point, and this essay claims they just aren't.)

Show me the "large American department store" that stocks mostly 4s and 6s, and I will get my size-4 ass over there right now. I will not stop to shower and change out of my pajamas and comb my hair. I will only put shoes on because it's legally required. If they're focused on 4s and 6s, maybe there will be something in there that fits me. Maybe if they vanity-size the 4s into what should really be 6s or 8s, there's some chance they'll carry a 2 that'll fit me -- and a 2, not a 1, not a straight-line teenager-shaped garment.

Generally they don't. Those claims in that essay were just not true, and I don't think they were harmlessly untrue, either.

Most women I know have a hard time buying clothing, because women's clothes are supposed to be more fitted than men's. I'm pretty sure many, maybe most, of us have thought, "It can't be like this for everybody." Actually, it can. When you take a really wide range of body shapes and sizes and try to standardize them into a simple numerical system, it is possible for the average to work well for no one. We shouldn't mistake the problem of averaging across a sample that isn't bell-curve shaped on more than one axis for the problem of thinking everybody ought to be a certain size. We have both problems, but not manifested as they're described in the linked essay.

People who listen to this kind of essay uncritically end up thinking that the system is skewed in favor of me and people like me. I'm average height, I'm on the thin side, I'm fairly curvy. It must be all my fault. Clothes must be made for me. Guess what? They're not. They just plain aren't. Some designs are ideal for skinny girls with boobs. They're flattering. They're pretty. And they're usually actually constructed for stocky girls with significantly less chest. Many of the styles that most flatter a thin, curvy figure are cut to give the illusion of that figure rather than actually fitting on it. Some of my women friends have claimed that I "can wear anything [I] want and it'll all look good on [me]." That's very sweet, but also very wrong. A wrap dress cut for my body type would indeed probably look fine, but a wrap dress intended to make someone else's body type look like mine is going to look ridiculous on me, and that's mostly what the stores sell, because they believe they'll be able to sell more of them. They may be right; they're in this business and I'm not. But it's destructive to blame each other for clothing problems, and it's destructive to assume the system is geared to cater to someone it's utterly failing.

Once in high school, I was having a particularly bad day, even by high school standards, and my locker jammed, and I kicked it and shouted, "I HATE THIS PLACE!" And the stoner guy with the locker next to me, the kid in the tatty metal band T-shirts who smelled as though he hadn't gone as many as 5 minutes without a joint in the last 4 years, blinked at me in shock. "You hate this place?" he said. "I hate this damn place so much!" I said.

He pried the locker open for me, shaking his head. "Even the brains hate it here. Hey!" And he called this amazing situation to the attention of a passing friend. "Hey, guess what? Even the brains hate it here." His friend stared at me incredulously. I reaffirmed my feelings about Ralston High School: "I can't stand it. Why do you think I'm trying so hard to get out of here early?" They hadn't thought about it that way. And from then on, we weren't friends exactly, but we were certainly friendly. We were fellow sufferers. We talked from time to time. He had thought that the system that was making him miserable was designed for my benefit and my enjoyment. He had thought that the whole institution was about making things good for "the brains." Once he figured out that it wasn't actually about that at all, I was no longer the enemy. And we actually were people to each other.

That's what I want here. I want to recognize that yes, being smart in high school made some things much easier for me, and yes, being thin makes some things easier for me, too. I just don't want there to be mistakes about what those things are. Some people try to go the other way and pity the skinny girls: "Oh, you poor dear, you must starve yourself for society's notions of beauty." No. I have a fairly small appetite, I get moderate exercise, I got decent genes, and for heaven's sake, I'm 26. I haven't had a kid. I haven't hit any of the major metabolic bumps people's bodies throw at them. I am not a starving waif under the thumb of the patriarchy, and I'm not an arrogant entitlement-mentality shopper, buying from an abundance of 4s and laughing at the lack of 14s. I have a hard time buying decent jeans. Just like most of the rest of you.

The essayist also blames men, which I think is destructive and untrue: other women are much stricter and snarkier about enforcing standards of appearance than men are. And the essayist doesn't seem to understand subtle gender dimorphism. Women are, on the average, smaller than men, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why most married women have husbands larger than themselves.

seagrit is shorter than all three of her brothers, and it's not because her parents starved her and kept her from getting healthy activity. If my parents had had a son, odds are extremely good that he'd be taller than 5'6". This is not a subtle social plot. This is biology.

So we read stuff like this, and we link to stuff like this, and it frustrates me, because the essayist clearly had some good points and some good images, but she veered off into counterfactual claims, and very few people seem to have a big problem with that. Almost everyone I read who linked to it said they thought it was "interesting" or that they found some of the images striking, not that they thought it was right through and through. That's a good thing. What's not a good thing is that the essayist felt she needed to make her points that way in the first place.

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Bravo for critical thinking! I found the story implausible too, but thought of it as more a parable to illustrate a point then a factual story. Also do not think men have clothing all that much easier then woman. Although it may not be as fitted it is still suited to some imaginary "average" guy. Maybe I should say mythical average guy size.

I have some sympathy with what you say, as someone who does not fit mythical average guy sizes (I have to buy dress shirts from special places because I have a sleeve length and a collar size which are not often seen in conjunction with one another) ... but the fact remains, I now buy those dress shirts ONLINE most of the time because they are cheaper; I buy my jeans online because no one else carries them anymore (NON-preshrunk 501's) ... and I can buy these things and more with reasonable confidence because I know that, in men's pants, a 36 waist and a 36 inseam means the same thing no matter where I get them. Don't underestimate that. Many women have told me they envy men that ability to walk in and know that a pair of pants or a dress shirt will fit just because of the numbers. Meanwhile a size 14 dress is not the same size dress from one store to the next. Sometimes not even vaguely the same size. It's a true mess.

It sounds like they should at least standardize the sizes so you have some hope that a "14" is really a "14" from place to place.

I'd like it if they'd standardize, say, the hip measurement, rather than the whole size. Because standardizing the whole size means having no hope of finding a fit anywhere, whereas going in with one fixed data point and seeing how they've cut the other parts seems reasonable-ish, sort of.

That's one nice thing about men's pants and dress shirts - we have multiple fits that we look for, so we can buy appropriate inseam AND waist, not some mythical size that causes me to have six inches of extra trousers because my waist is so large. Dress shirts are similar - neck size and shirt size. And we get to assign sleeve length if we get really ambitious and get fitted for a suit.

Actually even though mens pants are usually accurate as to length and waist. (But don't get me started on the complete lack of "odd numbered" waist sizes after you get past a 32 inch waist.) I have found that the standard mens dress shirt measurements of sleeve length and neck size to be entirely lacking. I have very long arms and a medium sized neck. Since they base the chest and "waist" diameter of the shirt based on sleeve length. I often times have to tuck in an extra foot or so of fabric in the back of my pants or look rather like a ships sail.

Sure, I get that. I think that a large part of mens' ease in finding clothes is the fact that we tend to gain weight in a fairly regular pattern. Most guys get a big belly and gain weight elsewhere much more slowly - so even as the sizes increase the shape is predictable. It seems like women are more varied in the ways that they get larger in relation to their height. This woman has a pot belly, that woman's butt gets wide but her legs stay skinny, that woman over there just gets absurdly top-heavy, etc.

Persons such as yourself fall outside the expected shape and run into the trouble. It's really the same problem that women are having, but our "expected shape" is more predictable for a larger % of the population.

Hm. In many other categories its is males who have a higher standard deviation. So I'd be kind of surprised to learn that this is not true in body shape.

I think that the sizing system is one part smoke-and-mirrors and another part avoidance. Considering how uptight many women get over wearing a "22", imagine the reaction if they started using inches and their pants were suddenly a "44" or "50". This obviously doesn't apply universally, but considering the amount of wearing uncomfortable pants, laying down on the bed to zip things, and brassiers with extra breasts spilling out the top like they are a terrier, it seems that women as a cultural unit are not into admitting what size they actually are.

So one part fashion conspiracy, one part denial.

Ill-fitting bras are not always a matter of wanting to be a different size. Sometimes it's the only thing we can find that's even close. Sometimes we buy a well-fitting bra only to find that the elastic constricts or relaxes when worn and washed, even on the delicate cycle, and then we've shelled out $20, $40, $60, $80 for an ill-fitting bra and have no reason to believe the next $20, $40, etc. will be better-spent.

I know women who buy clothes from a given brand because they can be a 6 when really they're a 10. I had a male friend who did the same thing: he was in the middle of losing weight and bought pants he knew full well were cut at least two inches more generously than indicated, because, damn it, he wanted to be that size. So it's not just a girl thing. Men do plaster it across their butts in some brands of jeans, which is not something you could ever get women to do, generally.

Yeah, the "can't find bras in my size" thing wasn't what I was thinking of. I had some exes who just wouldn't admit they weren't the same size they were in high school, even though their new size when they finally broke down was still fairly common (say, insisting on wearing a 36C when they are in fact a 38D or some such). Extended-alphabet sizes with shoe-size bust sizes and other matters of engineering arcana are the exception, of course. :)

I can certainly believe that you had a guy friend who did that. Guys in their 30s even have a tendency to wear their pants under their guts in a vain attempt to pretend they aren't getting fat. I would like to point out that I never said it was just a girl thing, nor did I use any phrases like, "as opposed to men."

One must hand wash bras. I tell you three times.

K.

I know, and I have been since you said so, and so far it's been fine. But I still think it should be possible for someone to construct non-sports bras that can stand up to the rigors of the delicate cycle inside a lingerie bag. I really think modern engineering should be up to that task.

(no subject)

buymeaclue.livejournal.com - 2004-12-13 11:18 (UTC) - Expand

I agree with C.: men may not be shaped the way clothing companies expect them to be, but you at least have some hope that a number means something that maps to an external reality.

I buy clothes for

markgritter and

timprov from time to time, and no, not everything fits them perfectly off the rack, but most of the "correct" size will appear to be within social standards of acceptable fits of men's trousers. Not GQ standards, sure, but men don't seem to have talked each other into taking GQ standards all that seriously.

And really, I think it's easy for men to underestimate the difficulty of fitting female hips and waist in combination. Some of my male college friends were trying to tell me that I could just buy boys' jeans and "put a belt on." Ummmmmm...no. When you can store the latest Neal Stephenson novel in the waistband of your pants, turned sideways, and still have room for a couple of magazines, that is not what we call "fitting."

I have often times wondered why womens pants at least do not use a "waist x length" measurement. Is there some sort of history for only using sizes. Is it a result of women traditionally wearing dresses when then invited the concept of numbered sizes?

It's the hips. Seriously, this is exactly what I mean by guys having a hard time figuring out how much difference hips can make.

dichroic and I talked about this when I bought my jeans that actually fit, because we wear the same numerical size and are shaped fairly differently within it. (I've started to think we should e-mail each other: "Hey, I tried on brand such-and-such, and it was totally wrong, maybe you should give it a try.")

And yes, sizing started when women were wearing garments that required at least four measurements (length, bust, waist, and hip), and nobody really wanted to have to solve a matrix to buy a dress or a dress pattern.

Hmmm maybe a size matrix would be better. Waist, length and some sort of A,B,C, size to indicate hips?

You are still underestimating the importance of hips. Don't try to make it "guy pants with slight modification." Waist is a hell of a lot more flexible for fit than hips in most women's pants. (Dresses are sometimes another story, depending on the cut of dress.)

In fact I think we've done that. (By the way, you probably don't want Lands End's new lower cut pants, because I have a pair that fit.) And I *can* wear mens pants with a belt and only be able to insert a paperback turned the thin way (and probably not one by Neal Stephenson) which illustrates the difference.

Also, even those four measurements are not enough. I am long-legged and short-waisted, which means even a lot of petite clothing doesn't fit me because a lot of it seems to be made for people with short legs and big butts that require a long rise to cover them.

Oh, gosh, yeah, and rise can be a pretty big problem. Wearing pants up to your bra or having the waist show up where your hips are barely getting started: not good.

I'm stuck wearing low rise pants because I have a very short waist and otherwise, all pants go to right under my boobs. While I hate having to wear a belt and fighting my pants falling down or flashing something and everyone thinks those who wear those kind of pants are skanks, it's still not as uncomfortable as sitting with the pants button digging into me all day long at work.

Just to make this more complicated, there's also the issue of where the women are from. A very good friend of mine spent years assuming that no clothing would fit her and that her figure was intrinsically unfeminine... until she tried shopping in Hong Kong, and discovered that clothing cut for Asian women is cut completely differently from that for Americans. Turns out average hip sizes are completely different.

...okay, random thought. Would it be useful to have a device which one could apply to an article of clothing and have it do rapid measurements of its "actual" size, say the 4-parameter size you just mentioned?

Like a Star Trek style scanner? ("These pants are dead, Jim.") Sure, that'd be helpful. I don't think it'd replace trying them on, because there is always the great Hangs Funny Problem. But it'd be good to know what wasn't worth bothering to try on.

ITYM "These pants are dim, Jed."

And well, it would bring things to the state that they already are with men's clothing...

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