Size 14 is the New Size 10

I've often wondered why each brand of jeans, or particuar stores (le Chateau - I'm looking at you), make clothes in size 0, 00, and 000. In Le Chateau world I'm a size double zero. In the real world, I'm a size 2. Silly the way these stores make us think we are thinner than we are. I guess part of it is marketing to vanity.

What is wrong with a woman who is a size 10? Nothing. Although the media would have us believe that a size 10 is simply way too heavy. It's a horrible battle, especially if you are a woman in the public - actresses, models, etc. Women can't win - either too thin, too fat, or too old...

I know. Britney Spears, despite being a great weight and in amazing shape, still gets called too fat. Women who are over 30 are called too old. Women of all ages are called whores on a daily basis in the celebrity gossip world. It is a serious problem. If a person is too thin after succumbing to all the pressure, then they're anorexic and need to eat a cheeseburger.  If she is a little heavier or god forbid has celulite than she's disgusting and too fat. Misha Barton is a young actress and the media are constantly picking on her because she doesn't have zero percent body fat (like Posh Beckham, who isn't human from what I can tell).

I'm not sure I'll be able to articulate this properly, but I recently read a book that Jessica Valenti edited, called Yes Means Yes that weighed in on rape culture.

One interesting point that was made, relating to Britney Spears, was how our culture fetishizes youth and even child-like behaviour. Britney Spears is the perfect example of this: She burst on to the scene at 17 in a school-girl uniform as she sang the cheesiest of pop songs. Suddenly she was adored by millions. But she fell from this pedestal as soon as the world categorizes her as impure and womanly, instead of maintaining her virginal/childlike image. As soon as she admitted she was no longer a virgin (as she promised she would remain) and put on a few extra pounds, revealing a more womanly figure, she no longer fit the mould of desirable youth.

That would give me a 92 cm waistline.

It's clear in my experience that sizing has gone through much re-jigging in the last 25 years.  As a teenager, I loved shopping trips to the US because they carried size 3, while at home sizes only went as small as 5 and were too big.  In my late teens and early 20s, I wore a size 5 or 6.  Now, in my forties and 10 to 15 lbs heavier, I wear a 4 at home, and a 2 or 0 in the US.

I gained eighty pounds with my 1st pregnancy, and after I lost all the weight (took a year), I went out and bought a pair of pants, and they were size 6!  I was so thrilled, when I got home I tried on a skirt I'd bought when I was 20, that was also size six, only to discover I couldn't get it past my knees.

At 45, I'm still a size six.  And I'm 15-20 pounds heavier than when I was 20, and also a size 6.

I find I have to wear a large at many of the trendy stores catering to young women, yet I fall right into the average weight bracket for my height. If I'm "average" and wearing the largest size in the store, the sizing math certainly doesn't add up. Yet, other stores I go to I wear a small. You'd think somewhere along the line all this would have been standardized, but of course that wouldn't be in marketer's best interests.

If you want to see why North Americans are getting more overweight than before, just watch "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" on the Food Network - gignormous food serving sizes, high calorie food, very little emphasis on veggies. And those places are always packed. I know, I used to drive Route 66 in the USA, and I've had it all - including lots of chicken fried steak with dumplings  and gravy. I even brought  home a couple of menus from Denny's (I asked the managers for them). 

I have recently lost about 50 lbs (over the last 8 months), and so I'm finding myself doing a lot more clothes shopping these days than usual, just to get some stuff that fits.  (Mostly thrift stores, these days!)

The large-sized clothing stores are also in on this scam.  I won't go into what size I am :D but suffice it to say that there is NO WAY I am the size of pants that I bought for myself a couple of months ago at Reitmans.  I remember when, as a teenager, I took that size, and I was about 50 lbs lighter than I am NOW.  That's not even 20 years ago.

The regular/small size stores are deflating the sizes from their historical points, but the large-sized stores deflate the sizes even in comparison to the regular-sized stores.

When I go to Winners (where I get my jeans - cheaper there), I'm always a size or two larger than I am at the large-sized stores.  And a size 14 in a large-sized store like Addition-Elle bears absolutely no resemblance to a size 14 (when they have it) in Suzy Shier.  I remember being in between the size 14 in large-sized and small-sized stores a decade ago.  It was miserable, because there was no place I could find things that fit since small-sized stores end around size 14 (sometimes you get lucky and find a 15 or 16 but not often) and large-sized stores also start around size 14.

Congrats on the weightloss, Michelle!

Clothes simply aren't built for real women with real curves. Finding something to fit my bust is always a struggle, no matter where I am. In a culture that glamorizes big boobs, it's baffling how many stores aren't catering to curvaceous women, and that includes chains that carry lingerie. It seems, to me at least, if your body isn't straight up and down, you're going to have one heck of a time finding something that fits properly.

And don't get me started on two-piece bathing suits that you can't mix and match! I have no statistics to back it up, but I'm pretty sure the majority of women aren't the same size top and bottom. I'll stop before I enter a full-blown rant! 

I agree with Timebandit.  I am far from, ahem, well endowed and have problems finding shirts that either don't sag or make me look like a boy.  I have an unusual body type, because I am at the bottom of my BMI, have a small chest but normal size hips and am compact in my height things are always gapping out at the back, to long on the legs or to small at the waist.  I would hazzard a guess to say a more accurate statement is that cloths aren't made for most women period.

Swimsuits - it's hard to find my size top, but they always have the bottom and HAVE TO buy my swimsuits from the stores that sell the two piece bathing suits seperately becuase I have yet to find one suit that fits both bottom and top (before I found the ones where I could buy them seperate I used to buy two suits - one for the top and one for the bottom).  I am still searching for the girl who is well endowed with straight hips so if anyone knows her tell her I have a dozen swimsuits for her.

Personally I have never cared about numbers.  The biggest I wore was 16 or 18 or something.  I knew that it was all a big scam on the part of the stores (one of the lessons that ironically was taught to me very early on by a program about sexuality that is being discussed in another thread).  I mainly bought my clothes at goodwill most of my teenage life so never had to worry about numbers and I never picked up on the importance of it after that (thank god).