The top story on CNN.com today is entitled “As nation gains, ‘overweight’ is relative.” And the title pretty much explains the gist of the article – Americans today perceive themselves as being less overweight than they did a decade or so ago, despite the fact that the average person has gotten a little larger. We see our body size as it compares to the people around us, and heavy is becoming normal.
They start off the article with a discussion of “vanity sizing.” They say size 10 is the new 14, and retailers are enlarging their sizes to make us feel as though we were shrinking, when in reality our waistlines are expanding. Case in point: i’ve been shopping at Express for jeans since high school. Back then, i wore a size 3/4. Toward the end of high school, i’d moved up to a size 5/6. But then in college, the 5/6es in the store started to seem baggy, and although my body hadn’t changed i moved back down to the size 4. By the end of college, again although my body hadn’t really changed, i was wearing a size 2 at Express, as i am today.
Now, i saw a photograph of myself that someone had taken from behind me a few weeks ago, and i said to myself “that is not a size two butt!!”
So, i launched into a Google search for the history of dress sizes and what my actual measurements would have translated to in the days of size-fourteen-Marilyn-Monroe. Alas, i could find no such size chart, but feeling incensed that Express had so misled me, i researched vanity sizing and found that it isn’t some manipulation of our collective psychosis, but a practical measure that the fashion industry has no choice but to take.
This article i came across on Fashion Incubator explains that each retailer has number or relative (S/M/L) designations which range across its garments from smallest to largest, and each retailer has a different range depending on who buys the garments. For example, if you make tutus, your “large” is still going to seem tiny to the average person, because ballerinas are necessarily tiny people. It would be impractical to have standardized sizing across all garments and retailers, because then ballerinas would have to choose among XS, XXS, XXXS. Makes sense, right?
So, the retailers aren’t just stroking our egos by making their size twos as big as sixes used to be. People are getting bigger. If you’re Express and people stop buying your size zero because nobody is that small anymore, and you start getting harassed by people for not carrying size fourteen (discriminating!), doesn’t it make sense to make all the garments bigger, but keep the old number scale?
Maybe we’re pointing the finger at the wrong industry. Maybe we should take exercise and nutrition into our own hands and stop claiming to be victimized by pop culture and the fashion industry that is supposedly slave to it. Or, just maybe, we could stop judging one another and ourselves and start to just be comfortable with the bodies that our culture produces. I think there are a lot of forces at work in this problem, but i’ve come to realize that perhaps the least of them is so-called vanity sizing.
Nathan and i went to the EPIC Ugly Sweater Party at Impromptu Studio last night. Here’s a photo, courtesy of Juice/Des Moines Register/Metromix:
We got our sweaters at Goodwill – i’m sorta covering his up, but it was hilariously ugly. Not sure what i’m doing with my hands there in the photo, though.
I received three “no thanks” and one call for an interview today. I also applied for one more job, but there’s a drawback to these online job searches in that you can only send your resume as text to most of them. For a graphic designer that doesn’t quite cut it, and it takes some digging to find any alternative method of applying to most of the jobs i’ve looked at.
I think i need to re-write my resume and re-think my cover letter strategies. I suspect i just don’t have enough experience to satisfy most employers, which is a major drag.
Anybody know an easy way to print light colors on black paper? Embossing a stamp would be too craft-y, i think. I’d better call some local print shops.
I want to go buy things to console myself. I’m in need of a cute track jacket (i.e. hoodless hoodie with stripes on the sleeves) but can’t ever find one i like. I can’t figure out what the heck happened to the black hoodie i used to have… every once in a while i just LOSE an article of clothing–not just socks, mind you, but bigger things that i like and ought not to just lose track of randomly.
I’m looking forward to playing some Mario Kart tonight. Get my mind off things.