Size, Schmize

At what point did strong, confident women who successfully manage careers, households, families, and active personal lives; women with the world at their feet, sell themselves short over a little number on a random piece of fabric?

For the past couple of weeks there has been a big ruckus over Madrid’s and London’s Fashion Weeks banning models that more closely resemble greyhounds and whippets rather than real ladies who like stylish clothing. By the way, hats off to the mayors of these cities, because today’s catwalk models look really, really bad. I’m not one of those jealous chicks who have a bad word to say about every woman with an ass smaller than mine, if I was, I would be one miserable girl, but the extreme thinness of this latest batch of runway models is downright disturbing. Did I miss some sort of memo declaring that the latest look should be less Heidi Klum and more Auschwitz survivor?

The crazy thing about this whole thin/fat/small size/large size craze is that women have allowed themselves to become controlled by a number on the inside of their garments. Countless times when I’ve been shopping I’ve overheard remarks like, ‘I can’t believe I’m a 12, I used to be a 10, now I want to kill myself’ or ‘If I can’t fit into this size 6, then I don’t want to go on living.’ These are comments from grown women in their 30s who are out shopping with friends at upscale department stores, yet the fact that they have a friend to be with or money to spend on clothing pales in comparison to the joy that will come to them if they are able to adhere to the number on the fabric.

Don’t think for a moment that this size issue has missed the fashion industry. I read an article a few days ago where the fashion industry has readily admitted to screwing with women’s clothing sizes. They have acknowledged that as women get larger in America, they have been expanding the definition of what a size means. They play it off like they do it so that women will feel good about themselves, yet this same article talked about a new size that the fashion world has come up with; Size 00. For all of you who stay up at night worried that Nicole Ritchie is no longer able to stuff her boney bod into a Size 0, along comes Size 00 to remedy the problem, and set a whole new standard for adolescent girls and Hollywood actresses to starve themselves down to.

I may not be a brilliant woman or have all of the answers, but I’ve come up with my own way of giving the finger to the fashion industry and their issue of sizing. When I go to a store and find a garment that I like, I take a size 10, 12, and 14 into the dressing room. Most of the time, I’m a size 12, but depending on the cut of the garment, the fabric, and how the thing looks on me, I could be as little as a size 10 or as large as a size 14, and I could care less. If the outfit looks good, and I don’t have to pay retail, then I will walk out with my size 12 slacks, a size 10 shirt, a size 14 jacket, and be a happy girl. My suggestion to other women is that you do the same, and start teaching this method to your daughters ASAP!

As I said before, I don’t have all of the answers and solutions, but this method of ‘the best of three’ has worked for me for quite sometime. It has zero effect on my self-esteem and allows me to have positive shopping experiences. As an additional benefit, I don’t have to wish death on myself if all of my clothes aren’t that magic size 10 as would the women I overhear while I’m shopping.

Women have been held to an unrealistic standard for decades in terms of size, and today, it seems that the extreme of what we should look like, and what we really are, are on the opposite ends of mall. Despite the best efforts by London and Madrid requiring that all runway models have a normal Body Mass Index, according to the BMI charts a woman who is 5’9” only has to weigh 125 lbs. to be considered “normal.” The average woman in the U.S. is 5’7” and weighs 160 lbs. The fashion industry and mass marketing has set us up for dramatic and tragic failure and we have fallen for it.

Much like the ‘girl-next-door’ celebrity that turns out to be a coke whore, and confesses tearfully on Oprah, there is a way to battle back. Us gals have to adopt the ‘best of three’ method in the dressing room, and the ‘see if I give a rat’s ass’ view to size and enjoy our physical quirks. Somewhere in between hippo and Holocaust is a range of weights, heights, body types, and figures along with clothing to fit them, and once we become less dependant on the little number on the random piece of fabric, we will actually be able to spend the rest of our lives enjoying who we are, which is the kind of happiness the fashion industry will never market to us.