FATGIRLslim

I can’t even remember where I was looking that I managed to find this, but I did find it, and I found it interesting:

In the UK women’s clothing size is traditionally indicated by numbers. In 1982 the British Standards Institute produced a standard set of sizes from 8 to 32 quoted in centimetres.

(For example, a size 8 has 83cm/32.7in – 87cm/34.3in hips. A size 32 has 140cm/55.1in – 144cm/56.7in hips.)

Unfortunately, there is no requirement for manufacturers or stores to use the British Standard resulting in a range of size indications for the same size of garment from different sellers. A new standard BS EN 13402 is intended to replace this system with one in which actual measurements are used, however this is not yet in common use.

Check out the table – it’s incredible. I think the last time I measured myself, I had something like… 70in hips? I can’t find my tape measure since we moved, so I can’t validate that – I’ll buy a new one next time I’m in the yarn store in town – but I’m pretty sure my hips are huge.

Way beyond the British Standard size 32, anyway.

The thing I don’t understand is: why isn’t there a requirement to use the sizes. Even if it meant updating the sizes to today’s “modern” sizes, to incorporate size 4s and 6s (urgh), why not standardise it?

I can’t even walk into Evans, the only plus-size store in the town that does up to a 32, and buy a pair of size 32 jeans off the rack, because I’m never quite sure if they’re going to fit me or not.

I’ve bought my clothes from Evans since I was in High School, when I outgrew “normal” stores. I’ve never been able to buy two pairs of trousers – or even two tops – of the same size and know that they’re going to fit me. I have a pair of size 32 jeans that fall off my ass and stomach after I’ve been wearing them for 20 minutes, and another pair of size 32 cropped jeans that I currently can’t close around my stomach. Even if I could close them, I wouldn’t be able to sit down in them.

Both are 98% cotton, 2% elastane, waist-height. The only difference is that one is a pair of crops, the other full-length. Sitting them one on top of the other, I’m pretty sure that there would be an inch or two of a difference.

And this is a pain. The fact that there is no standardisation in clothing sizes means that yes, anybody – not just fat people, anybody – who walks into a store is never guaranteed that two sizes are the same sizes.

It bothers me because, being at the upper end of the size scale, I sometimes can’t get pants that fit me, even in stores like Evans. And yet I went in and bought a pair of size 28 leggings that fit me like leggings are supposed to fit me. And I bought a pair of size 30 leggings that are actually a little loose on me around the waist.

But I picked up a pair of size 32 denim shorts – 96% cotton, 4% elastane (the more elastane, generally, the better the fit for me) excluding trims – that wouldn’t come up past my thighs.

I do wonder, though: if they standarised clothing sizes… what would my true size be? I think it’s strange that I’ve been a size 30/32 since I was in fourth or fifth year in high school, but back then I probably only weighed 280-300lbs. (Still a huge amount, but not as much as now, 100lbs+ later) I have a photo of myself and my little sister pinned to my pin board right now, and the dress I’m wearing in it is a 30/32. I threw the dress out maybe five years ago, five years after leaving High School, because I thought, “I’m never going to get back into that dress.”

And it was, indeed, a 30/32. But the clothes I was wearing at the time, 100lbs heavier, were also a 30/32.

(The clothes I’m wearing now are actually very odd – a size 28 stretchy purple vest, a size 30/32 striped hoody cardigan, and a pair of Joe Brown’s College Shorts in the 62/64″ waist – which also fall right off me unless I pull ‘em up. Because they’re boys’ shorts, though, I don’t particularly mind – different physiology and whatnot, right? They’re MADE for slobbing around the house.

I’ve been told by my Dad, however, that it’s not girls’ clothes. Mens’ clothing sizes, traditionally given in inches, are apparently not always standard sizes as they’re given, either. Dad can go into a store and buy a 34″ waist that falls off him, and go into another store and buy a 36″ that doesn’t come close to fitting him.

So basically: it’s all fucked up.

I just hope that, if the day comes when they do standardise things, I don’t end up being a UK ladies size 48 or 50 or something. That’d just be worse than being a 32.