Suzy

The past few weeks, I have been spending a lot of time in stores, trying on clothes and buying new clothes and generally perking up my wardrobe. I have a tendency to hold on to clothes as long as possible, which means that although I have certainly bought clothes since I started losing weight a few years back, I do still mostly wear things from several years ago, especially skirts. It's made clothes shopping something of an adventure these days, because I don't know what sizes to grab. I think I wrote about how Liss and I went shopping a few weeks back, and I tried on what I thought was my normal size, a 10, and she said it was too big and kept going back for a smaller and smaller size until I hit a 4, which was perfect. It was pretty mind boggling.

I commented offhand on my style blog a few weeks ago that I had a tendency to grab 8s and 10s (if not higher - I tried on a bunch of 12s at Anthro in May) even though I have been buying 4s and 6s that fit. And then I thought...why? I was out shopping this week and did the same thing at all the stores. I was just at these stores in July and know those sizes don't fit. It's not like it's fun to try something on and have it look bad and then having to keep going out to get new sizes. It wastes my time and makes me feel like an idiot. So why do I keep doing it?

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile, and it's sparked some research on my part.


First, I realized that a big part of the problem is that I don't believe I am or could be a size 6. That's, like, a mythical size. It's for other people. How can my size be that? I always thought that it would come with smaller thighs than I currently possess. And a smaller everything, but really, thighs. I'm 135 pounds, shouldn't a 6 be smaller than I am? God, forget those 4s I've successfully worn, I can't wrap my head around a 6. I have zero frame of reference. I don't feel like I'm average weight, I still feel big. I constantly compare myself to my co-worker, which is totally unfair to me. She's taller, with a completely different shape and a vastly different body history than me. If she's my litmus for thin/right size and healthy, I will never be successful. But I can't help it. I compare myself to her every day, especially when other co-workers compliment my clothes or my weight loss, and come up lacking. If she's my ideal, what's the reality?

So I went looking around and found My Body Gallery. It's been interesting browsing the site. Plugging in my height and weight brings up a range of women, many of whom do look like me, and are my size. Okay, good to know. So who has the thighs I want? Apparently if I lose 5-10 pounds, I stand a better chance of having them. But maybe I never will - I've always lead with my thighs. Maybe my body just has large thighs and muscular calves, no matter what size I am. Maybe I won't ever have the look I want. Or maybe now I have a new goal. I don't know, but I do think it's helpful to have a frame of reference for what weights and heights and bodies look like. It's not something women usually talk about, and it makes it hard to understand what to expect. For me, anyway.

When I go shopping and I pick up the larger sizes, it's not easy. I have a pretty good guess that it won't fit, but that wars with my feeling that I couldn't possibly be a smaller size, and I feel crappy picking the bigger size. But I also feel like, how could I even consider grabbing the smaller one? It's this kind of circular, twisty way of thinking. I don't think that my body should be that size, so other people must think the same thing and what are they thinking about me, presuming that I could fit into it? They have to be judging me, right? She thinks she's good enough for that? I'm not good enough for that. I don't belong there.

Logically, I know it doesn't make sense. People aren't looking at my size selections. Size doesn't equal worth. I'm not going to be laughed out of any stores. Salespeople are used to people needing to try multiple sizes to get the best fit. (Although I had this horrible interaction at the Gap on Monday that really validated those negative thoughts. Intellectually, I know that the salesgirl screwed up the interaction, and I'm pretty sure that she knew it, too, but I'm the one still feeling insecure and bad about trying on the pants.)

It doesn't help that sizing isn't made equal. I went to H&M for the first time this week and ended up buying a tank top in medium, a dress in small and a cardigan in extra-small. And that was frustrating - multiple trips back out to the floor to try and find the right size. I appear to be a 4-6 in most of my stores now (Gap, Anthro, Old Navy, Loft), and that's hard enough to believe, but it's not like I can trust that immediately in a new or different store. Am I dealing with vanity sizing in a huge way?

So I went looking to find out what is going on with sizing these days. Interestingly, I learned that when sizes first came out in the 40s, the smallest size was a 10. That is comparable to a 6 in the 60s and a 0 today. I'm trying to figure out which article I read that talked about how the 10 actually meant something - something with scaling. The whole series of articles is absolutely fascinating, but the first one I read was about how there is no such thing as vanity sizing.

She writes that sizing evolves, just as people and style do. She also writes that companies base their personal sizing off of their customer base. Their average customer is a medium, and sizes above and below that are based off that average median size. Well, hello, that makes perfect sense. Every company has their own target demographic, and those groups each have their own average size. Why would I expect different companies who reach different people to have the same standards? Even within the same company, different lines have different customers, and sizing reflects that reality.

Somehow, it is much easier for me to understand my size relative to a company's sales base rather than my own body. Of course I'm larger than the average Forever 21 customer. Sure, I believe I'm smaller than the average Loft customer because they tend to reach older women. Translating that into numbers is a little harder, but I'm guessing 6 is about average in all my usual haunts, and that makes more sense.

I also learned that everyone you see on TV (including What Not to Wear) and in magazines have had their clothes tailored. They buy whatever size fits their biggest part and then take in the rest. They don't have perfect bodies for clothes, they make the clothes perfectly fit their bodies. It's only in the last few decades that people buy everything off the rack, rather than making clothes to fit their own body size and companies can't hope to make clothes to fit every possible shape, of course. They're aiming for that average. Expecting all clothes to fit you isn't logical, but we all feel upset when it doesn't happen. It doesn't work like that, and my expectations need to shift.


So what have I learned? Comparing myself to individual other women is a recipe for disaster. Comparing myself to a group norm makes sense. I need to get some of my favorite, too big clothes taken in. And I really need to get over my issues of not feeling good enough.

By posting all of this, I hope some of these links might help others like they helped me. And I guess I'm curious as to how others deal with these issues. What works?