Jean shopping: It’s the worst. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
This weekend, I was walking with an armful of jeans, all size 27, into the fitting room at the store where I work, Anthropologie. I was off the clock, planning to splurge on a new pair. But, like any splurge, before I bought, the fit needed to be perfect. I repeat again: Jean shopping is the worst. Not only does the proper pair of jeans need to fit in the waist, but they need to be snug around the butt, not too snug in the thighs, and they need to be the right length. What’s worse is that different types of denim all have a different amount of stretch, but I digress.
I was walking into the fitting room, armful of jeans, all the same size, when my co-worker noticed the pair on top. As I walked past she said to me, “Oh, the light blue pair, that brand runs big. You should probably grab the next size down.”
At first, I was just grateful for the tip. That bit of product knowledge could not only help me, but would help the next customer I helped in the fitting room trying on a pair of jeans. Still, as I walked out, ready to exchange the 27 for a 26, I couldn’t help but to be a bit annoyed. Why couldn’t these jeans be marked the same as the rest?
The first attempt at women’s standardized sizing happened in the late 1930s, when clothing makers realized that they were losing money by constantly having to alter clothing to fit customers. As Time Magazine chronicles, the process goes something like this: Some government organization takes some tiny cross-section of American women, and uses a complex formula to boil that cross section down into a series of numbers. About 15 years later, those numbers are deemed inaccurate, and we get new numbers. The government tries to regulate sizing; companies ignore size regulations. The regulations ease up, before disappearing altogether in the 1980s, and we’re in a similar place that we are now: stuck in a free-for-all, where the individual designers of clothing decide what number to put on the tag.
On top of this free-for-all, we have what’s called vanity sizing. Now, I’ll be the first to admit it. Vanity sizing makes me feel good. At Anthropologie, I almost always wear an extra small. At Urban Outfitters, which is owned by the same company, I wear either a small or a medium, depending on the clothing designer. Now, part of this has to do with each store’s demographic. Urban appeals to teens and college students, who are generally smaller than Anthropologie’s late-20's to 60's demographic. Still, these differences in labels indicate that Anthropologie is perhaps trying to appeal to a woman’s desire to look thinner. If she can put on an extra small and look good in the dress, there’s no doubt she’ll buy it, and tell her friends to do the same.
Between the vanity sizing and size standards that only pretend to exist, we’re left in this grey area, where in one store, I can wear a size two, and in another, a size eight. I’m both an extra-small and a large. As viral videos and photographs have shown us, there’s a vast inconsistency in the world of women’s clothing when it comes to the widths and lengths of the cloth that we put on our bodies, and these inconsistencies only become more complicated when we include plus-size women, or think about what tags on our clothing have to do with society, body image, and self-esteem.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a call for the standardization of sizes. Standardization presents its own problems, and there’s a reason why the government kept getting it wrong: pulling that accurate cross section to develop those numbers is incredibly hard to do, especially when the country’s demographics and ideas about what body is currently “trendy” are constantly changing. However, this is a gentle reminder that the size system is complete and utter bullsh*t.
We let arbitrary labels that don’t actually mean anything define us. I’m sick of working in the fitting room and having to persuade beautiful, gorgeous women with cute noses and beautiful skin and shiny hair that going up to a size eight in this particular dress doesn’t mean anything. When you buy clothes, buy clothes that make you happy. Ones with striking colors and soft fabrics, ones with cool designs and different textures. Use the numbers as a gentle guide only, and don’t get disheartened when something doesn’t fit. It’s a number. Not your worth, not your kindness, not your beauty, not even your size. It’s a tag, not the end of the world.
