Vanity sizing

Have you ever heard of vanity sizing?  It's also known as size inflation.  I hadn't until recently.  Apparently, in order to sell more clothes, the garment industry started assigning smaller sizes to articles of clothing.  This means that what's a size 14 today used to be about a size 20 in the past. 

So it's not necessarily that we're physically shrinking when we wear a smaller size today in comparison to what we wore years ago, the numbers on the tags are what's changing!  This is a practice predominantly in the U.S. and the U.K. so God only knows what size we really wear nowadays.  It's all about psychology:  people feel better buying clothes if they think they're wearing smaller sizes even when they haven't lost a pound.  The garment industry, of course, is only looking at profits and they'll do whatever it takes to sell us their offerings.  The problem with this type of system is that sizing is now totally confusing because not only are sizes not standardized, no two sizes feel the same between retailers.  In fact, research has shown that clothing from expensive brands will often show a smaller size on their tags than the same exact article sold by a cheaper brand. 

In the U.S., a size 14 dress in the 1930s became a size 8 in the 1960s and the same dress was labeled a size 0 in 2011.  According to what I read, designer Nicole Miller introduced size 0 to appease many customers in California who were requesting smaller sizes.  Eventually, Miller had to introduce size 00, known as a subzero size, to appease even more petite women.  Although I will never have to worry about wearing anything remotely close to a 0, let alone a subzero size, the whole concept of sizing is incredibly confusing and frustrating!

On the other side of the spectrum, in the plus size section, somewhere along the line, they introduced 0XL, 1XL, 2XL, etc. to confuse the issue even further.  At my heaviest, I was wearing an XXXL shirt.  As I lost weight and started wearing smaller clothes, I noticed that when XL became too large for me, I went down to a 0XL size when I was expecting to be wearing a large at that point.  This 0XL was so confusing to me because I was thinking, "Wouldn't a 0XL be … a large?  How can an extra large be a zero?"  Yet a large was fitting a bit tighter than a 0XL.  It turns out that the XL sizes with a number in front (i.e., 2XL, 3XL, and so on) run a little bigger than the normal XLs.  In other words, a 0XL will run a bit larger than an XL, a 2XL will run a bit larger than an XXL, etc.  

In addition to all of this insanity regarding sizes assigned by the garment industry, we have to consider the cut of an article of clothing, too, because every woman knows that depending on the style of the article, how it fits on the body will vary.   It's enough to make your head spin when you're trying to shop for new clothes.

When I found out about vanity sizing a few months ago, I was so disappointed!   Even though I knew I was losing a lot of weight, doesn't vanity sizing mean that when I got down to a size 16, I would have been wearing a size 20-22 at the same exact weight years ago?  It bummed me out until I realized that although this might be true today, wouldn't the opposite be true as well?  In other words, when I was wearing a size 24-28 less than three years ago when I was at my heaviest, didn't it mean that I was really wearing a size 30-34 from yesteryear?  I see where the psychology of vanity sizing comes into play because if I had to shop for a size in the 30s, I would've been even more mortified than I already was!  I remember that when I went beyond size 24, I was thinking, "Oh, my God!  I'm going to be in the 30s if I don't do something about my weight!"  Little did I know that I probably was already.

Shopping for clothes nowadays is a coin toss as to what size I can fit into.  For example, I have a shirt that is a 2XL that fits me perfectly even when my other 2XL shirts are huge on me.  I also have an XL shirt that is smaller than another shirt in a large.  Buying clothes online or through catalogues is especially frustrating because the sizes mean virtually nothing.  One catalogue sells 14-16 items as a "medium" whereas other catalogues show the same 14-16 size as a "large" and yet other catalogues show the same 14-16 size as an XL.  At least at the brick and mortar stores, I can try the clothes on and see for myself which fit me better regardless of the size reflected on the tags. 

Once I learned about vanity sizing, although it's great to say that I'm wearing a size 14 jeans today, in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Well, not really!"  So don't put too much value in what size you're wearing as far as the tag on the article of clothing shows because from what I explained above, the sizes reflected on the tags are virtually worthless.

The true telling of my success is the scale, my nemesis.  They can't change that!  A pound is a pound no matter what.  It is true that some scales are calibrated differently, particularly home scales, but the difference is usually only a couple of pounds.  I've gone through several home scales through the years and I found that the ones with a dial were the least accurate and that the digital scales are better, at least the models I purchased.  I often verify the accuracy of my home scale by weighing myself at doctors' offices (only since I started losing weight because I refused to get weighed before) and so far my present digital scale has been pretty accurate.