Crossword: Welcome to the insanity of women's clothing sizes
We learn how stores size clothes, and how it often has nothing to do about the best fit
Have you ever been a size ‘medium’ in one store, ‘small’ in the other and ‘large’ in yet another?
Click start to play today’s Crossword and find the answer to the clue “Clothing size indicator” in 7-Across.
Clothing sizes, especially for women, have become incredibly confusing in today’s day and age, where even though many women in many countries are physically larger than in past eras, brands have shifted their metrics to make shoppers feel slimmer.
According to an August 2015 report in US-based news website The Washington Post, a size eight dress today is nearly the same as a size 16 dress in 1958. And if you were a size eight in 1958, you wouldn’t even be able to find an equivalent size in the modern day – dresses of that size are likely smaller than today’s size 00.
Even if you didn’t compare sizes by the decade, just hold up a size-six pair of jeans from one company to that of another, and you would likely find variations in the waistband by as much as six inches, according to one estimate in US-based TIME magazine.
Moreover, if you are on the heavier side, you might find just a limited number of clothes that fit you, pushed to a corner in a large department store. Emmy Award-winning Hollywood actress Melissa McCarthy, who is currently a size 14, commented on this practice in a July 2016 interview with US-based website Refinery29, when she said: “If I have a friend who is a size six, we can’t go shopping together. They literally segregate us.”
According to the TIME report, although 67 per cent of American women wear a size 14 or above (considered “plus size” or “curvy”), most stores don’t carry those sizes.
Why, you may ask? It’s a good question, with a very convoluted answer. A lot of it comes down to the rise of vanity sizing, or making shoppers feel good about their size (hence, the previous generation’s size 16 is today’s size eight).
Also, today’s women’s clothing sizes (in Western stores) have their roots in a government project during the US Depression era, when a pair of statisticians were sent to survey and measure nearly 15,000 women, in an effort to pin down the average woman’s size. The idea was perhaps to standardise measurements the way it had been done with men’s clothing. Since the development of military uniforms, men have been able to find most of their clothing with just a few numbers or letters (S, M, L, XL). So, it could work similarly with women, right?
Wrong.
Needless to say, the statisticians failed to do this with women’s sizes. With so many varieties of body types, it was impossible to figure out a way to standardize women’s measurements. So, the statisticians proposed using arbitrary numerical sizes that weren’t based on any specific measurement, and that’s what we still use today. Basically, we expect the sizing system that works on footwear, to work on our bodies.
The problem is, when people buy clothes online, they can’t figure out their size, and have to end up returning clothes. According to the TIME report, nearly 40 per cent of customers return clothes because of sizing issues.
Perhaps it’s time the fashion industry gets its act together, and makes clothes with a clear view of the people that wear them. Startups are already taking steps in the right direction, by asking online shoppers to enter the size and brand of their best-fitting clothes, before recommending products accordingly.
Until then, women are going to have to go through the grind of finding the perfect fit, in fitting rooms across the world.
What do you think of women’s clothing sizes? Play today’s Crossword and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.