Well, I've finally made it: I'm a size 2. How did I do it? Going to the gym, laying off the Ben and Jerry's, living a healthy lifestyle? Ha! No, in fact, I didn't do a damn thing. The sizes just keep getting bigger. Is this because of the media hoopla about actresses in Hollywood wearing a size 2? I've met a few and I am not built anything like them. Do the stores actually think we are going to buy more clothes because of what size is on the label? I really just want things to fit. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I nuts? Should I just shut up and be happy about it? I'd like to, but for some reason it bothers me.

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2001

Answers

No, you're not nuts. I'm also a former size 6 who is now a size 2 due to changing sizes. If this trend continues, I'm not going to be able to buy clothes that fit me in a few years--at least not at mid-priced chain stores like The Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, etc, which I've found to be the worst offenders. More upscale stores seem to have preserved their sizing schemes a bit better, but I rarely buy clothes at those stores.

I think stores are actually right that people will be more likely to buy something if they fit into a size they want to be.

I, too, find this trend disturbing, if only because it encourages people to be in denial about the creeping weight gain most Americans eventually face as they age and often leads to serious health problems.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

I am absolutely a size 6. Yet if I buy jeans in Eddie Bauer I get a size 4. If I feel like ruining my day I'll go into Express but I'll need an 8 or even a 10. I find this to be more true with casual wear. All of suits/ work clothes are a 6.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Maybe if they started changing men's sizing (which is based on measurements) I'd worry. But about women's clothing? Until women's slacks come with three measurements (waist/hips/inseam) I refuse to worry about how places label their sizing. Same for blouses/dresses (neck/sleeve/bust).

The numbers describing women's closthing sizes are completely arbitrary to start with, and I refuse to be flustered by arbitrary changes.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

The sizes are arbitrary, but the changes aren't. They are calculated to make people feel thinner than they really are.

This might seem benign at first glance, but having a weight problem is a serious health risk. Perpetuating people's self-denial on this issue is undoubtedly harmful to public health.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

And I'm sure it does nothing for those with anorexia, who can never be too thin anyway.

Aren't women's clothes also traditionally more expensive than men's, or has that changed?

And I remember seeing a report, that dry cleaners generally charge more for a plain women's blouse over a men's shirt.

You women have a lot of legitimate complaints about clothes issues/fashion industry.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

There was a law passed about the dry cleaning thing a few years ago, but I don't think it made much difference.

As for the Gap and places like that, I don't think it's that big a deal. They've been gradually doing this over the last decade or so to put themselves in line with more upscale stores. Back in the early 90's I did most of my shopping at department stores, where I was generally a 4, or a 2 in the more expensive brands. (And then there was Ellen Tracy, where the size 0 was too big for me. Go figure.) Meanwhile, I was a 6 or an 8 at the Gap, and at places like Express I was an 8 or a 10.

I'm about ten pounds heavier than I was then, but the last pair of size 8 pants I bought at the Gap were easily two sizes too big for me. This isn't causing me to suddenly believe my scale is lying and that I've lost ten pounds, though, because I'm not a moron, and I don't think most other people are, either. I think most women over the age of 12 are aware that size ranges differ widely from store to store. They may be more likely to buy the size 4 than the size 10, but they aren't really kidding themselves.

Anyway, in this size range we aren't talking about anybody facing life-threatening obesity. Unless we know that the size change also affects larger sizes I don't see this as a serious problem. Just an annoying one for those of us who like to mail order.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

You don't have to be obese for extra weight to be life-threatening. Putting on even 10 or 20 pounds raises your risks for many illnesses (see this NIH website for more info).

And I do think that women are kidding themselves--at least some of them. I can't tell you how many times I've heard fat acceptance advocates mention that Marilyn Monroe wore a size 10 and that a few years ago, size 0 didn't even exist in their attempt to establish that women today are expected to be thinner than in the past. Of course, both of these statements are true, but they completely disregard the fact that sizing has changed significantly over the last 40 years.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Are the numbered sizes (without correlation to actual inches) an outdated method of sizing outfits?

Sounds like pre-feminist thinking, if I had to guess.

Well I know men's shirts or pants may say sm, med, or lg, but often they also list the actual measurement. Well, nearly always in pants, as it's more critical than shirts.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

what drives me really nuts is not knowing what size to take into the dressing room with me. should I grab a 6 and an 8 or an 8 and a 10?

my husband thought I was crazy when I told him that I hated going clothes shopping. so I took him along. he can't believe what we go through.

we went to get him so new pants the other day. he knew his size, we picked a few out, and they fit. just like that.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

That NIH website says that for people who are overweight, losing as little as ten pounds can greatly decrease their risk for certain diseases. It does not say, as far as I can tell, that people who are already within their recommended weight range see a decrease in health risks.

Unless you are very, very short, the size ranges we are talking about here are very unlikely to bump anyone out of the healthy weight category as listed on that same page. I'm not saying that the size range changes don't carry over to larger sizes; I'm just saying that here, on this topic, we don't have any evidence that they do. The largest size anyone here has mentioned is size 10, and that was me, and I'm a good 25-30 pounds less than the maximum health weight for my height, using that chart on the page you linked.

If someone wants to talk about size changes further up the size scale, then maybe we'll have evidence of a health danger. In this range, though, it's all about vanity.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Keep in mind that being "overweight" is clinically defined as having a BMI of over 25. For a 5'4" woman (average height in the U.S.), that means weighing 145 pounds. Such a woman would probably wear a size 10- 12. Shorter women could easily be clinically overweight and wear even smaller sizes.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

(A more detailed BMI chart from the same website can be found here .)

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Oh, and as for changing sizes over several decades: you're right that sizes have changed a lot since Marilyn Monroe's time, but they've changed in several different ways. Women are shaped differently than they used to be, probably due to diet, and the fact that we don't wear the same kind of undergarments. My years of shopping for vintage clothing has convinced me of this. Most vintage clothing reveals that women in past decades were much shorter and had much smaller hands and feet. They also had tiny little arms -- I certainly don't have large arms in any sense of the word, but arm holes in vintage clothes are almost always too small for me. So are neck openings. Fitted waists are also generally tiny, but the teeniest little dresses can still have enormous bustlines. Vintage pants are usually way too small in the waist and way too big in the hips for me.

That's not to say that there aren't larger-sized vintage dresses out there, but they still seem to be made for shorter women with disproportionally small waists ... which I think we can attribute to girdles.

In short, I think sometimes sizes change because women change. I keep reading that women now tend to have larger breasts than they did 20 years ago, because so many of us are on the pill. I imagine that will ultimately affect sizing, too.

I do agree with you about Marilyn Monroe, though. I've always read that she had a 24 inch waist during her glory days. That's hardly qualifies her as a fat acceptance icon, does it?

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

For me, Marilyn is a TUMMY acceptance icon. She helps me believe it when I repeat to myself "curvy is good" while trying on swimsuits under unforgiving clothing store lighting.

Or while reading about how all of you are size 2s or 6s or whatever. Damn. When I was 119 pounds (and I'm 5'8") I was a size 7. SEVEN. How tiny are you people, anyway?

Or is it all attributable to this size creep you are talking about?

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

I think it is the size creep, because I'm not tiny or anything. I'm short (5'2") and weigh about 110, which is small but not ridiculously so.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Well, it's also probably the difference between junior and misses sizes. If you have hips and breasts, you're going to need a bigger odd than even size, and the difference can be pretty significant. I haven't been a size 5 since junior high, I bet, but I've worn smaller sizes in the misses section.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

No, something is very different lately. For nearly 15 years, I was between 105-115 lbs at 5'5", and at my smallest, I bought size 4s, with size 6 always being the default size I'd try on first.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Man, I'm going straight to the republic of bananas. I bought a pair of chinos a J Crap in a petite 6, a size I have been for the last 2 years, and they were way too tight. They claimed to be "easy" through the thighs. That didn't make me feel good at all. Of course, now they are my "goal" pants, but I am seriously thinking they were mislabled.

When I do wear stuff at b.r, I am usually at least one size smaller, as they don't have petites. that helps too. but it sucks, because the shoulders are too big and the legs too long.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

I just wanted to add that the cut matters a lot, and that while some places seem to be changing their sizes so that a 6 is now labelled a 4, other places change their cut so much from one year to the next that the sizes end up going the other way.

I weighed significantly more than I do now a few years ago and bought size 14 chinos from Abercrombie. The next summer I had lost some weight, so I thought that I would try their size 12 chinos (the 14s were at that point falling off me). They had apparently changed the cut to something very different, much smaller in the leg and hip and waist, basically much more straight up and down instead of curvy, because not only could I not get the 12 on over my hips, I couldn't even zip up the 14.

I try to just ignore the size, since it bears such an arbitrary relationship to how much material is in the clothing, and go on my own body measurements. I have a friend who is a bit taller than me (I'm 5' 7.5") but has a MUCH smaller bone structure and very few curves in comparison to me - we are both reasonably fit and she wears a 6/8 and I wear a 12.

(This is off the topic a bit, but just to ask Jen Wade about the BMI since she brought it up - what bothers me about the calculation that you can do is that there is no way to take into account different bone structure sizes and muscle mass percentage, the way I think can be done if you get a test done at the doctor. I'm not in denial about the last 10 lbs that I want to lose right now to get back into the healthiest weight and BMI range, but I get frustrated that ever since I was 14 my weight has always been at the upper edges, or outside, of the ideal range, and that I looked sickeningly skinny when I weighed more in the middle of the range [this was due to being at a survival camp kind of thing, not because of dieting].)

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Yeah, it's true that BMI doesn't take variations in lean body mass into account. However, it's still a remarkably accurate predictor of health problems related to overweight and obesity. This is especially true in women, who vary less in their lean body mass than men due to their low testosterone levels. Even the musclebound Lindsay Davenport has a "healthy" BMI of 22.5 (she's 6'2" and weighs 175--she'd have to pack on 20 more pounds to be considered overweight).

The "overweight" BMI cutoff of 25 is based on epidemiological studies showing that that ratio is associated with increased mortality, but obviously, everyone's individual risk is unique. But the ranges are quite broad and they do apply pretty well to the vast majority of people. However, people should try to find their own ideal weight using the BMI ranges as a guideline.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001