Dress size limit?

[SuckingDownDarjeeling]

I've always wondered if I could physically have ever been a 'size zero'. Because I have fairly wide hips, even at my slimmest I'm not a wisp. I've dieted down to a size 8 in the past, and I wondered if size 6 or below was even technically achievable for me. I never tried to get there because I really didn't want to diet any more after that. (I have to do it all again now anyway though, I let myself go after pregnancy ).

Can a person's bone structure and build potentially limit how small their dress size could ever be? Or with enough starvation dieting, can anybody and everybody be a size zero. Whatever one of those is. I've never met one in real life 🦄

I understand some of the responses here might tell me to google it, but I tried and I'm not great at wording effective search terms. I'm interested to hear people's opinions and experiences, too.

@unmarkedbythat

I just looked at the size chart on ASOS. UK4/ US 0 is given as bust 30", waist 22.75" and hips 32.75". I can't remember having a bust measurement that small at any time after I started measuring my body, but I definitely remember having a 22 inch waist and 32 inch hips and wearing an 8.

But yeah. Body type matters. Even when really, below the safe weight for height zone, thin, I didn't fit in the smallest tops available. I cannot starve my ribcage any narrower!

That's strange, an 8 absolutely swamps me. I can only get jeans/trousers from a very few, select shops. The majority of them make me look as though I've got a wasting disease!

It's been a long, long time since an 8 was a 22 inch waist though- that's size inflation for you!

@CheeryAlmond asos size guide doesn't correspond to their actual sizes at all! I wear an asos size 4 and my waist size is 25"ish, dunno why they don't publish the actual sizes properly!

@unmarkedbythat

I just looked at the size chart on ASOS. UK4/ US 0 is given as bust 30", waist 22.75" and hips 32.75". I can't remember having a bust measurement that small at any time after I started measuring my body, but I definitely remember having a 22 inch waist and 32 inch hips and wearing an 8.

But yeah. Body type matters. Even when really, below the safe weight for height zone, thin, I didn't fit in the smallest tops available. I cannot starve my ribcage any narrower!

That was me as a teenager! I was very slim but healthy, and very sporty.

@pinkgin85 I see, that make sense!

I'm wearing jeans from Hollister at the minute (one of the only shops I can buy from) in the size 00.
22 inch waist and 32 inch hips and they fit nicely.

Explains why I was engulfed in ASOS trousers.

I find it so annoying, why can't shops just tell the truth about their measurements?!

[quote CheeryAlmond]@pinkgin85 I see, that make sense!

I'm wearing jeans from Hollister at the minute (one of the only shops I can buy from) in the size 00.
22 inch waist and 32 inch hips and they fit nicely.

Explains why I was engulfed in ASOS trousers.

I find it so annoying, why can't shops just tell the truth about their measurements?![/quote]
With the majority of adults being overweight, it makes financial sense to pander to our vanity and ensure we put that size 12 in the basket, rather than having us refuse to buy the size 14. That’s my take on it anyway.

I think you are correct OP. I have a history of eating disorders and even at a weight where I was being threatened with in-patient treatment I was still a size 6. I have a friend who is perfectly healthy but just absolutely tiny. She is under 5 foot tall by several inches and has size 2 feet. She is naturally very skinny and UK size 4 clothes are loose on her so she tends to buy from child ranges. When I look at picture of myself at my most unwell, practically flat-chested and with no fat covering my bones anywhere, I can still see that my 5 foot 8 frame had hips, ribs and shoulders that were wider than hers out naturally.

I now sit at the higher end of a healthy weight for my height, but I know that if I go down to the lowest healthy weight for my height or even lower I still would not fit into her clothes.

Incidentally I am very jealous that when she and her husband go on holiday to hot countries they can take 10 days of clothes in one suitcase between them. Hers literally take up no space at all!

Clear about measurements to me means call an 8 a 6 if you want, just let customers know that sizing has changed, and give the correct measurements for a '6' in the size chart. Then make a '4' so that customers are not being sized out by vanity sizing.

It makes more sense to me to size clothes in actual measurements.

I weighed 5.5 stone and was a size 10 in 1990 (old size 10 not modern- so an 8? ). My hips and shoulders were too large to be a smaller size. My feet lost a shoe size and the buttons on the bed caused bruising but still a size 10.

I think frame definitely is a major factor. I’m 5’ 9” and have wide pelvis. Even when I was at my biggest, I still had ‘thigh gap’ purely because of the width of my hips. At my lightest I was 7 stone 12 and very thin/ underweight, and I was still a size 8. (I’m up to a more we’ll padded physique now

My bones would never have it! Fat you can get rid of, but your bones are still your bones!

@PerfidiousAlbion I agree that, with society being larger, it's probably easier to pander to bigger sizes.

However, as @whirlwindwallaby has said, vanity sizing is a huge pain in the arse for people like me who are sized out of shops because they keep making the smaller sizes bigger.
I can only shop at a few stores for trousers as it is, if it carries on I'll have nothing to wear from the waist down

@Stillinbedat10am ahh, you see to me that's actually a huge relief! I too had an eating disorder in my early twenties, after having piled on weight from medication I had to take for years. I never went below size 8, which I believe I mentioned before, but at that time I felt like I just couldn't have been trying hard enough. It's nice to be able to look back and think that I was 'extreme enough', because that nagging doubt has always made me believe that I couldn't have been underweight like people thought if I wasn't smaller than size 8, and that maybe it was healthy for me after all. It absolutely wasn't!

@EBearhug

It makes more sense to me to size clothes in actual measurements.

Agreed.

Just label tops as 36” and bottoms as 28” like men’s clothing. Much easier.

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/08/01/health/adam/17182Calculatingbodyframesize.html

This is interesting. Sadly, I’m a large.

I'm 5ft 7 and a size 10 now (in my 40s and one DC).

I'd say I'm an average build but in my 20s I was extremely underweight (mental health illness and anorexia) and was a size 0 in US sizing. I was being threatened with inpatient care at an eating disorder clinic so I think it's fair to say that I'm not meant to be that size.

I think my ribcage and hips have widened since having DC but I do think I could starve myself back to that size again if I was unwell.

I was a size 6 in my late teens. I'm very short - just about 5 ft dead on - and at the time I was an active dancer, in class etc 20+ hours a week, and I walked everywhere and practically lived off fresh air. I didn't touch alcohol at all, or caffeine, or carbs!

Looking back at the photos, I was gawky, very underweight for my frame and natural shape. I looked at my best a year or two later, at around a 12 or so, choosing clothes that suited the fact that I'm supposed to have boobs and a bum, and a shape.

I would have had to stop all exercise, and lose all muscle, and starve myself to get anywhere near a four back then. I might be able to do it now, given the sizing changes, but I'm not convinced, because my basic shape did change when I had DD. I've certainly no desire to try.

I've several friends who are a lot taller than me, and one girl in my amdram group who is 18. There's not a spare inch on her, at all, her figure is perfect. But she's a hair short of 6 feet, and she's mostly a twelve. If she tried for a 4, she'd be a skeleton and I'm not convinced it'd work. As it is, she's forever cold, and runs out of energy quickly, gets dizzy a lot, gets joint aches etc.

I don't think size 6 is achievable for everyone and is a not a 'natural' size for very many women at all (I find it sad to hear women thinking they 'should' be a size 6), and 4 is not for anyone over the age of 14. I think of size 4 as '14 year old girl' basically.

@Echobelly

I don't think size 6 is achievable for everyone and is a not a 'natural' size for very many women at all (I find it sad to hear women thinking they 'should' be a size 6), and 4 is not for anyone over the age of 14. I think of size 4 as '14 year old girl' basically.

Vanity sizing means that some grown women need a 4 now though. I'm the same height and a kilo heavier than I was on my 15th birthday, I was almost a grown woman at 14. Heaps of schoolgirls are bigger than me, so I don't get a 4 being a size for 14 year olds.

I agree. Actually, I find it hard to see how I would ever end up ABOVE a size 6-8 on top, simply because although I am 5ft 5, I have extremely narrow shoulders and the distance between my clavicle and my nipple is shorter than average just because of how I am built so I would have to have absolutely massive breasts to fill out a bigger top and not expose myself (which I don't have, even pregnant). Couldn't get into a 4 though - rib cage is just too wide (I find a 6 in Reiss is snug on the rib cage in fitted dresses as their sizing is rather small compared to other places)

On the bottom, though, I would never get into a 4 even if I dieted. My pelvis is quite small I think (a 9lb baby certainly didn't make it through!), but my bum and thighs are quite muscular from running and cycling and so I would have to not just diet but also cut out all physical activities to support that.

Bone structure makes a difference. I used to model & am quite small boned whereas friends who had less flesh on their bones then me were a bigger size. My issue was boobs, I couldn't get rid of them.

But, I meant to say, that those who are smaller than me on the bottom don't have a problem if they fit size 4 whilst healthy - it's just bone structure. Some ladies are small framed and some are not.

height obviously makes a difference too.

As well as feet, go by shoulder width, wrist and elbow width.

Yep, not sure if finger size makes a difference? When DH bought my engagement ring & said he needed size H, the shop owner asked if I was petite & from an asian background. DH said 5ft 10 and no. He said go back & check because you've got it wrong!