If you've ever been shopping and found yourself wanting to slowly bang your head against a
mannequin in sheer size frustration--why, why, why--consider this. From nineteen fifty-eight
to two thousand eleven the smallest standardized women's clothing size in the US dropped from
an eight to a double zero. Most recently J Crew introduced a new women's clothing size.
The triple zero. Ooohh.
Pretty much ever since the nineteen twenties and thirties when women transitioned away
from making their own clothes at home or going to seamstresses, women's ready-made clothing
sizes have long confounded the female shopper. Way back then women's clothing sizes were
based off the ideal hourglass shape of a thirty-six inch bust, twenty-six inch waist and thirty-six
inch hips. Take for instance this nineteen twenty-seven quote from a New York Times article
about women's frustration with clothing sizes. 'Now I don't know who this mythical size thirty-six
is who forms the basis of clothing but average, tall, short, thin and plump women come into
a department store and a size thirty-six fits none of them.' Jeepers creepers. Yes we were
talking about this way back then which is crazy right? If you fast-forward to today
women's clothing sizes have arguably gotten even more confounding. A recent study which
looked at a thousand different pairs of size four pants and found as much as an eight and
a half inch waist differential between them. Case and point, two pairs of jeans I have
that are from the same store, are the same style and the same size and yet are not the
same size. Which is why these fit me a whole lot better than these. This is not to say
that women's frustration over inconsistent clothing sizes has been ignored. In the late
nineteen forties the US government funded the very first large-scale scientific study
of women's body measurements in an effort to develop standardized women's clothing sizes.
Employees with the National Bureau of Home Economics went around the country collecting
fifty-nine different measurements among fifteen thousand different volunteers to collect a
giant data pool that was then handed over to the National Bureau of Standards to develop
these clothing sizes. But there were a couple of major methodological problems with that
sample population. First of all any non-white women who participated, their results were
thrown out. Second the study participants tended to be poorer and thus back then skewed
underweight than the average woman. Ultimately the clothing sizes that were developed skewed
more towards thin and white women. So in nineteen eighty-three the Commerce Department finally
just threw out the commercial standards for women's apparel sizing. As all of that is
going on the average American female body is getting larger. And how do clothing companies
respond? With so-called vanity sizing. A size eight by today's standards corresponds to
a size fourteen or sixteen by nineteen fifty-eight standards. Brands are keeping the sizes the
same but just making the corresponding clothes larger. This has been increasing exponentially
in recent years to where in nineteen ninety-five what was a four or a six is now a two. While
some clothing brands come under fire for this there are also experts who say vanity sizing
is but a myth. By their logic all companies are doing are trying to make clothes to fit
their average and growing, or in J Crew's case with their size triple zero jeans, shrinking
customer-base. A lot of times the size of a size is going to depend on the price of
the clothes in the store. The lower end retailers tend to have larger sizes whereas higher end
retailers tend to have the smaller sizes. A size eight at an Old Navy is going to be
larger than a size eight at the Gap which is going to be larger than a size eight at
Banana Republic even though all of those stores are owned by the same company. Standardizing
women's clothing sizes they argue would actually make things worse for the female shopper.
As maddening as it can be to find a store or a brand that fits you, forcing all brands
and all stores to carry one set of sizes would actually not take into account all of the
various body types that women possess which really at the heart of it is the reason why
clothing sizes for women are so maddening. Ultimately it isn't so much the sizing problem
but really the fit of the clothes that makes it so hard to find a pair of jeans already.