To think that vanity sizing has gotten ridiculous?

[Namila]

I recently bought a beautiful, vintage, evening gown for a formal event. The dress is from the '80s. When I saw the dress on the rack (a unique piece since it was second hand) and the label read "size 10", I was disappointed as usually size 10 is way too big for me.

I thought I would still try it on, thinking that perhaps a tailor could work on it and make it fit properly. Imagine my surprise when I realized that not only it was not too big, it was nearly too tight!!

When I shop in "modern" stores I need to buy an 8, and sometimes even a 6. I'd normally swim in a 10! I am short and petite, but definitely not extremely skinny.

AIBU to think that this vanity sizing thing has gotten a bit crazy and the current sizes have nothing to do with the way sizes were even just a couple of decades ago?

Those of you quoting one bit of my post to prove your point are rather missing the original and most pertinent sentence: The sizes on the back of paper patterns HAVE NOT CHANGED.

Shop sizes have changed. Vanity sizing is definitely a thing and we should do what most of the rest of Europe does and go with actual waist/bust/hip sizes on the labels of garments.

Deluding ourselves is helping no-one.

The outright disbelief I have to contend with (when customers bring me a pattern to work from, and I have to cut an average of two or three sizes bigger than their shop size) is something I have to deal with on a regular basis. I never know quite how to manage people's disappointment... (I lie and say that dress patterns have a different sizing convention to shop sizing, which is true now but wasn't 30 years ago.)

Sometimes I'm struck by the fact that I've worn a size 12 most of my adult life but I'm a damn sight bigger than I was twenty years ago!

I wore a size 10-12 when I was in my teens.

Then, in between, I wore a size 16-18. But then I lost weight and again I wear 10-12 but I'm a LOT bigger than in my teens.

And I wear Gap size 28" waist jeans (at least, I think that's what 28 means). But my waist is not 28" and hasn't been for quite some time.

"Obesity is linked with lower income groups in the U.K. "

It is linked to lower income groups across Europe. That includes France and Italy.

Opinions don't really matter,the researchers have shown what is causing us to get fatter. The same experts know how to change things,but are ignored.

What I will say is that every Woman wore panty girdles, so they did have smaller waists.

Coronation street from the early 80's is on BBC3 and you can see by that,that we have gotten bigger and accepted it.

There is no Women from the early ones that is Eileen's size and if other female cast members were in the early one's they'd have comments made about them, written into the script. There are men who have a sizable gut, though, as I can remember, but a man dying from a CA in their 60's was normal.

SuitedandBooted I think you've mistook my meaning.

Dd wears my old clothes from the 70s and 80s so yes I know dd is an old size 8/10 or 0/2 in today's money.

As for only being close to death being the only way of achieving a 22" waist then clothes I kept from years ago all have 20 or 22" waist and were a standard size high street 10.
These items sold well because that is the size people were.
We are not comparing clothing from hundreds of years ago this is from only 30 years ago.

I had a 20" waist and have never worn a girdle or any form of control underwear

YABU for describing clothing from the 80s as vintage. Makes me feel ready for the knackers.

Sizing has indeed changed to accommodate the cost and fit issues associated with the population getting bigger. It is not a value judgement and is nothing to do with vanity.

I'm not denying it happens, I'm denying the idea that it's all part of some sort of conspiracy to make us all think we are thin and sexy. It's just adapting to the changing normal and it's not personal or loaded with value judgement. As the average gets bigger, of course manufacturers will need to size and cost around a bigger median or average size. That's nothing to do with vanity.

And I'm certainly denying that there is a terrible epidemic of women who think they're thin.

"Agree with the pp that this is generalising. Actually, men tend to gain on their bellies. Women, especially younger women tend to gain on hips and thighs. The reason waist measurements have gone up has a lot to do with women no longer wearing corsets or girdles. Oh and having adequate nourishment with no rations and being several inches taller".

How is that relevant to sizes increasing massively over only the last 2 or 3 decades? What does rationing have to do with middle-aged women (like me) who were born in the sixties and Seventies, and wore adult clothes in the Eighties and Nineties? I have never been near a girdle!
Adult women in the Fifties were certainly a bit smaller - most of my female relatives were smaller than me. But they had been raised in a pre-NHS world, and lived through the two World Wars, and the Great Depression (with no unemployment benefits, just National Assistance ). Some of them were technically Victorians!

My contemporaries, however, certainly did not lack food - there was no shortage of cakes/biscuits/ frozen ready-meals etc. I am not short, at 5ft 6in, (which makes me taller than the current average of 5ft 5in, Govt stats taken in 2012), and looking at my 1983 Sixth Form photo, plenty of my year group were noticeably taller than me. We were not teeny-tiny, small boned waifs.

So, in short the "sizes are just bigger because we are taller" myth is nonsense. People are simply much fatter now. That's not a moral judgement, it's just a fact.

Just popped on to say thank you to Disease of the sheep nothing else to say as I don't want to end up in tears again

Portia

I think you have done amazingly to recover but i know you will always be fighting it

Depends on the shop. I'm a size 8 in M and S , size 10 in Asda and Tesco and fat face and white stuff, size 12 in Dorothy P, but size 14 in H and M. Primark could be 12 or 14 or even 16. Measurements 34 28 39

The cheap shops tend to have smaller - fitting sizes, the expensive ones (aimed at middle aged women?) tend to have bigger ones

The shops are profiling their customers, which is why they all come up differently. Hell, the lines within a manufacturer are profiling their customers, so you may come up as different sizes even within the same store.

I'm with Yorick. Size inflation is clearly a thing, but it's not to do with 'vanity'.

I used to be a 12 in the 90s. Now I'm a 10 - but no thinner. So yeah, the sizes are different. Does that make me vain?!

It's so tiresomely predictable that anything to do with women and their bodies has to be named in some vaguely offensive way.

The whole notion also has a whiff of that perennially tedious notion of 'the good old days' when everyone was better/thinner whereas now everyone is fat, stupid, lazy and, apparently, vain. Just fuck off.

I suppose manufacturers, in adapting to the changed average, could have just kept the numbers going up and up infinitely until the lower ones gradually dropped off the scale completely. Somehow that seems more of a hassle for all concerned though. Just resizing around the new average seems much easier.

I don't know what it is about clothing that makes everyone an expert on textiles, or so determined to vilify plus size people, but it's as ugly as this season's top trends.

I guess Merchant is right that we can't ever have an innocent, sensible or inoffensive reason for anything within an industry for women. How depressing.

Maybe they should introduce a new sizing system then.

Not even the thinnest models have a 20 inch waist. I am 5'7'' and it is a physical impossibility for me to have a waist of that size. Cheryl Cole who everyone harped on about looking anorexic and needing to eat has never had a waist size below 23 inches. Whatever you want to believe, most women did not have anywhere close to a 20 inch waist even 40 years ago. They really didn't.

If your daughter is 0/2 dress size and towers over you, she is extremely slim and possibly underweight. That's not something to aspire to either. The target weight range used to be higher than what it now is. Up to 27.8 BMI used to be considered normal weight- in 1998 it changed to 25. So yes, based on that, there were fewer overweight people because more leeway was given.

If somebody is within the normal BMI range, using health as an excuse to criticise someone is despicable. There is zero evidence that they will have health problems because they are a healthy weight. There is also very little chance a size 14 woman who is marginally overweight will have health problems as a result of her size. There really isn't.

The NHS has problems because the government does not invest enough money in it. The money is of course there but the tories would prefer a US style system where only the rich get healtcare. Great. And you are feeding into that by pointing the blame at fellow citizens for daring to be slightly overweight.

If you want a medal for being a particular size, be my guest. Well done that your genetics caused you to be born with a 20 inch waist.

Yorick one of the trends at the mo is the crop top style even on jumpers. There is no way i can wear them. I wouldnt even without the droopy skin on my tum. I like to keep my belly warm in winter so i dont get a stomach chill. Its a daft trend especially for the time of year.

Helena, I'll take your word for it, I can't bear to look at the fashions at the moment. But cropped jumpers in autumn? With skinny jeans (ick), cold shoulder tops (ffs) and leggings as trousers (wtf)....If that's not proof that they really don't care about our vanity, I don't know what is.

I hate these vanity sizing threads. Partly because they are just plain bloody wrong. Clothing sizing is changing but it's not because of some grand conspiracy to make us all think we're Marilyn Monroe.

But mostly because they always degenerate into attacks on bigger people, even implying they must be too stupid to see if they need to lose weight and go blindly by a random label that nobody heeds any more. Then the sprinkling of posts that make no point at all except for the poster to claim that on the internet they have a 16 inch waist or whatever the fuck, so the thread isn't just wrong and hateful, it's boring too.

I know I should just fuck off but it really really annoys me. And as we have seen from some personal accounts, these attitudes can be very damaging.

Great post Yorick

This has come up on my TIO
Just to say thank you Helena.

This is something that matters. I can go into a menswear department and buy clothes for my son in his size that he doesn't need to try on, because I know they will fit.

We shouldn't have to take three sizes into the changing room to see what fits. It's a waste of time. In some shops a size 12 can be too big or too small depending on the item. If measurements were all in inches we could work out the rest.

Thank you, Helena.

In terms of men's clothes, that's annoying but I don't think there's much we can do. Women are far more diverse in their shapes than men are. I'm not saying there's no diversity in men, but pretty much every man, whatever his height or size, has broader shoulders and narrower hips. Their shapes are less complicated.

Personally I think more of us should be getting to know our friendly local seamstresses and getting stuff made to measure or at least altered. It actually isn't as expensive as you might think.

I agree that it is getting a bit silly. I am in no way skinny, actually a bit on the fat side. went into Next the other day and tried on what i thought was my size (12). Every item of clothing in that size was swimming on me, I had to get an 8. Why can't shops just do correct sizing? Surely people wouldn't get upset at having to buy their correct size??

Also what do people do in Next who are actually a size 8? I don't think Next go down to size 4s...

I don't get upset about not being able to buy a particular size.

I just find it irritating to be a woman of average height 5' 4" and find it very difficult to find clothes that fit.