June 29, 2009 • 16 mins
Women shopping for clothes often find that sizes are less than standard. Why the confusing system? Learn more about the history -- and future -- of women's clothing sizes in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house top boards dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. This is Smiley and I'm Kristen. And Kristen.
(00:20):
I was thinking of an anecdote today. Uh, one time Christmas.
My family is sitting around playing this card game and
redraw Card. It's got like a deep question and it
helps you learn things about other people. It was very meaningful,
except my family is a little sarcastic. So when the
question what do you like least about your gender came up,
(00:42):
my brother responded that the thing he liked least about
being male was that he always had to walk to
the back of department stores to get to the men's department.
That was his biggest complaint. Wow, yeah, well, life must
be good for the Edmunds brothers. But I have to
say when he said it, there were these like nods
of recognition from all the guys in the room, like, yeah,
it is kind of a bummer to have to walk
(01:03):
to the back of the department store. But I was thinking,
at least when he gets there, shopping is easy. Oh, yeah,
they know, they just have to know they're whatever inch
inch size, waist size, leg links. It seems like two numbers,
like thirty two by thirty six. You know, I don't
know what those mean, but it seems very standardized. Yeah,
whereas if we were to walk into a department store
(01:25):
right now, pick out five different brands of jeans, same size,
guarantee you right now, maybe one of those would fit.
Well yeah, oh maybe maybe it's a long time for
girls to shop. Yeah. Men and women can both relate
to this, women who obviously are buying clothes themselves and
men who have valiantly made the attempt to buy clothes
(01:48):
for women. Um, it is. It is hard. It is
a strange and confusing world of numbers and sizes that
just really don't add up. They don't add up. You
might be, you know, a size six in one store,
size eight from another store, maybe even the same store.
You have to buy like three different sizes. I don't
know what size and nam anymore. I just I just
try to get into a zen state before I walk
(02:10):
into a store and just let it take me. Just
go in there with this main clothes you can handle
and interesting enough. Christ and I when we were researching
women's clothing sizes. Both took a survey that kind of
question like what kind of fits we liked, kind of
styles we liked, and Kristen, You've got like sixty five
possible gene styles would fit you. Yeah, sixty five genes.
(02:31):
It was fine, Like it's like, oh, yeah, I answer
all these questions, We'll find the perfect pair or sixty
five pairs of genes. Yeah, I got seventy two gene results.
There's no way I'm trying on seventy two genes not
gonna happen. So let's get to the bottom of this.
Why are women's clothing size is so hard to decipher?
Why are they why they started to figure out why
can't it be like the good old days, by which
(02:52):
I mean the priest Civil War days. Yes, I don't
know if I call them the good old days, but
but yes, the Civil War does have a lot to
do with the standardization of clothing sizes. Before then, a
lot of clothes were either made in the home or
if you were wealthy enough, you could have a tailor
make clothes for you. But with the Civil War, soldiers
(03:14):
needed uniforms obviously, and home production couldn't exactly keep up
with demand, and so then you start having the mass
production of uniforms, which then led to standardized standardization of
men's sizes because they're like, well, if this would be
a lot easier if we could just kind of you know,
stamp out different sizes of men's uniforms and send them off. Yeah,
(03:36):
they took all that data. After the Civil War, men
could buy ready made clothes. Women didn't follow until about
the nineteen twenties, and that's when you know, industrious industrialization
excuse me, was picking up, and you know, companies started
trying to appeal to women, being like, by this dress,
it's already made for you. Yeah, you've got the growing
urban middle class that that's able to afford more of
(03:58):
these clothes. Just you know, advertising is starting to take off.
All of these forces combining to to kick off the
whole retail industry. But they were making all these ready
make clothes with absolutely no data about women's bodies. So
you would send off for your dress, they'd mail it back,
it would it would look like you know, a burlap
sack on you, not necessarily in texture, which is kind
(04:20):
of how a lot of clothes I put on now
that I think are my size look on me but
burn clothes. So between nineteen and nineteen fifty two, the
Mail Order Association of America in conjunction with the National
Bureau of Standards, organized this massive survey of women's measurements
(04:43):
and they collected all of the data. I think it
was sixteen thousand women that participated in this study, uh,
to figure out what exactly women's clothing sizes were. Yeah,
and they also took some data during World War Two
from what the Women's Army Corps. They used the volunteer
years from that organization to also you know, feed into
the data. But regardless where the data came from, it
(05:05):
was mostly from young Caucasian women, not very ethnically diverse results,
not taking into account how your body changes as you age.
It was sort of these very small subsets of women
who determined the original standard sizes, right, but nevertheless they
would take They took fifty nine measurements from each volunteer
(05:26):
and the studies were published um by the U. S
d A under the title Women's Measurements for Garments and
Pattern Construction, and those are still used today. If you're
a sewer, patterns that you buy in the store still
use those original sizes, which go from eight to thirty eight.
But one thing that you'll notice if and I I can,
I can speak personally to this. My mom was a seamstress,
(05:49):
still is a seamstress, and she would make dresses for
me and I remember we a couple of years ago.
I wanted I wanted to dress, and we decided that
we would we would work on one together, and so
we went to the store and picking out the pattern.
Finding the right size. Pattern was slightly traumatic because since
it's based on these old body measurements, I had to
(06:12):
go up a few sizes than I normally would. You're
wearing a thirty eight. Yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't very honestly,
wasn't very happy about it. But it's because, like you said,
it's really just patterns that are that follow these standards now,
because if you walk into a store an eight back
in nine certainly isn't the eight that you'll find today.
And the very reason that happened is probably because of
how you felt when you bought that pattern for your dress.
(06:35):
Is it made you feel bad about a number, and
so you know, brands figured out that women don't want
to buy clothing that's really high up on the scale. So,
as Kristen said, what was a size eight may now
be a size zero simply because people have figured out
that women are vain about what size they are, right,
And I think what you're referring to is vanity sizing.
Vanity sizing, and it's it's sort of a hot topic
(06:57):
of debate in the fashion world. I've read some arguments
this week that people who say it doesn't exist are
the people who say there's no way it doesn't exist
when their stores they're selling size zero's size like zero zero. Yeah,
it's small. There's a definite trend. I mean, according to
an article on msnbc dot com, a size eight in
nineteen fifty translated to a size four in the nineteen seventies,
(07:20):
and today that same size eight is a double zero,
which is kind of hard to believe when you consider
a statistic UH from the U. S Department of Health
and Human Services, as reported in Real Simple magazine, looked
at women from nineteen sixty two to two thousand and two,
and their height had gone up one inch and their
weight had gone up more than twenty four pounds. So
(07:40):
we're somehow getting bigger and our clothes are getting smaller. Right.
I think the average woman's size today is a fourteen. Yeah,
Whereas it used to be the eight was the was
considered the the average average size. But I guarantee you
if you try to go vintage shopping and you put
on an eight, uh, it's gonna be tight. But it's
interesting you mentioned the size of eight, Kristen, because we're
(08:02):
reading about how close our size today and manufacturers work
off the assumption that eight is sort of the midpoint,
despite the fact that, as you say, it's probably closer
to fourteen, right, Molly. According to Tim Gunn of Project
Runway Fame, uh, the process for even designing a woman's
garment starts with the designer making a sketch of the
(08:22):
idea and then uh, they enlist a quote unquote fit model,
who is a person who represents the company's ideal midpoint size,
which is, like you said, that size eight. But this
is where it might get tricky because different designers might
use a different silhouette. Some fit models might have, you know,
(08:46):
broader shoulders or narrower hips, or larger thighs, whatever, whatever
it is. Because each designer has an idea of how
they want their garments to look on our bodies. So
that's why you you still get variations even among the
fit size eight. Right. And you know, because these women
their job is to be a size eight, they may
not be a size eight like a real world women.
(09:07):
A real world woman is a size eight, right, because
you could walk into any number of stores in the
size aid could actually fit all different sizes of them.
And but as you say, the designers do care how
their clothes look, which is why I'm guessing. I mean,
I don't want to point any fingers, but I think
that the designers seem to care more about how the
clothes look for the smaller sizes, and then they just
(09:28):
kind of multiply up for the heavier sizes. Yeah, they
try to do everything in uh in proportion, like as
the as the waiste gets larger than the arms get longer.
But it's really not even know, Yeah, that's not how
our our bodies grow. So now today we have this
situation where sizes are just all over the place, and
(09:51):
some governments want to do something about it. Yeah, this
is a time and we should be modeling Spain. Yeah,
Spain has really can taking the lead in this women's
clothing size standardization because if you remember, I believe it
was in two thousand seven, Spain actually banned um extremely
thin models from walking the catwalk in there in their
(10:13):
fashion week, and the Minister of Health then took it
one step further by calling for the standardization of women's
clothing sizes based on these real world female measurements because
he thought that it reflected poorly on or promoted poor
body image for younger consumers especially, and he was calling
(10:33):
for this not only from mass market retailers but also
for the smaller designers as well, so that an eight
isn't eight, isn't eight, no matter where you shop. So
it'll be interesting to see how how that actually plays out.
And there have also been efforts in the US and
the UK as well, Molly too kind of revamp the
the initial survey that we were talking about that took
(10:54):
place um in at the mid century to update those
clothing sizes because, like you said, it was mostly Caucasian women,
which is not representative of the population. Yeah, and you
know what's cool about this, Christen, They used scanners. Scanners, yes,
full body scanners, Like there's this company h they have
what's it called the T two t TC two TC
(11:18):
two T two is the terminator sequel um. So you'd
walk into the scanner and all this like uh technology,
bursts of white light that I don't quite understand. Text
stuff can cover this for us. Yeah, well I'm Christians
just looking at me blankly when I started talking about
white light. But white light would capture your body and
would make your body into like a series of dots essentially,
(11:39):
and then the manufacturers would know how two dots were related,
and that would be the measurement, as opposed to just
putting a tape measure around your waist and calling that
your measurement. They would look at ratios, they would look
at where things were located and which things were higher
and lower on some people, um, and that was how
they would do measurements. So the vision some of these
(12:00):
people had was that you could get a scan have
it put on like a hard drive, and you could
walk around the stores and put it into like their
scanner complementary device. I guess and say, this is my body,
find clothes that fit me, and you can find the
exact clothes. But that isn't that's not exactly how things
have happened. That does not sound cheap. So I'm guessing
(12:20):
that was one factor in scanning technology not really getting
off the ground. But one thing that didn't come out
of this, I believe it was the size USA was
the name of this survey, including the white light high
tech scanners that we obviously know a lot about. Um
was that it intentionally included more minority women. They actively
(12:41):
sought out African American women, Latino women, who now make
up a much larger percentage of the population than they
did in the nineteen fifties, to actually get a representative
look at what a woman's body in the US looks like.
And you know, they're finding that women are like snowflakes.
There really are no to a like. I don't know
we'll ever get to the point where a size eight
(13:01):
is a size eight is a size eight. But I
think the important thing that could come out of this
is that we learned that size eight is not the midpoint.
The study found that only ten percent or less than
ten percent and women met an ideal size eight, So
that should not be the standard for which we based
all our clothing sizes, right, And there was an article
on this in the Atlantic Vie Virginia postural, and there
(13:23):
was an interesting quote that she uh that she made
which said that clothing creates the illusion that bodies fit
an esthetically pleasing form, that clothes actually cover up the
natural shape of our bodies. And I think that's important
to keep in mind, Like you said, bodies as it's
kind of cheesy as it sounds, bodies are like snowflakes.
(13:44):
There's not an actual standard size of a woman's body.
With a man, it might be easier to to break
it down into a waste and you know, in seam
but there we just had a lot more curves to
work with, Molly. Let's face it, we do, so you know,
it's it's kind of an unfortunate end to the podcast
because we don't have any sort of grand solution for this.
(14:05):
You really do have to basically try on all these
sizes and I find want that fits right and if
you feel crazy that you're walking into a store and
you put on you know, the size eight, and maybe
fact matter is it might be bigger than it used
to be because as you know, Americans are growing larger.
Um companies are trying to cater to that by by
downsizing their sizes. You're not You're not crazy, No, not crazy.
(14:26):
It's just women's clothing sizes are not standard. Going back
to that initial standardizing effort that we were talking about
that started really in the early twentieth century, that was
thrown out completely in Yeah, it just wasn't it wasn't accurate. Yeah,
so we might see I don't know, maybe in the
(14:47):
next few years, with the Size USA survey and all
these fantastic scanners we have, we might see maybe a
little more standardization. But I gotta say, don't hold your
breath for for a while. We can move to Spain,
because we to Spain. I'd love to move to Spain.
They have afternoon naps, yes, don Ces and Molly before
we before we go head out and try to sneak
(15:07):
a SISA and how stuff works offices. I have to
say something to men, because the idea for this podcast
came from a male listener who was asking about women's
clothing sizes. And you know what, um, take all of this,
take all of this to heart. When you're thinking about
whether or not you want to buy a lady in
your life a piece of clothing, Maybe you just stick
(15:27):
with perfume or shoes. Shoes sizes, those are easy to
figure out, yeah, um, or just take her with you,
Take her with you maybe to a tailor. Yeah, so
you can get some romantic honey, We're gonna go to
a tailor, so you're close hip perfectly to a habadasha. Well,
if you want to learn more about clothing style and
(15:50):
just good old fashioned anatomy, you can head over to
how stuff works dot com. And as always, if you
have a question or comment for me and Molly, please
send us an email at mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com. And finally, if you want to read
even more stuff that is on mine and Molly's minds,
(16:10):
you should check out our new blog called how to
Stuff and of course you can find that at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
(16:30):
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house top boards dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. This is Smiley and I'm Kristen. And Kristen.
(00:20):
I was thinking of an anecdote today. Uh, one time Christmas.
My family is sitting around playing this card game and
redraw Card. It's got like a deep question and it
helps you learn things about other people. It was very meaningful,
except my family is a little sarcastic. So when the
question what do you like least about your gender came up,
(00:42):
my brother responded that the thing he liked least about
being male was that he always had to walk to
the back of department stores to get to the men's department.
That was his biggest complaint. Wow, yeah, well, life must
be good for the Edmunds brothers. But I have to
say when he said it, there were these like nods
of recognition from all the guys in the room, like, yeah,
it is kind of a bummer to have to walk
(01:03):
to the back of the department store. But I was thinking,
at least when he gets there, shopping is easy. Oh, yeah,
they know, they just have to know they're whatever inch
inch size, waist size, leg links. It seems like two numbers,
like thirty two by thirty six. You know, I don't
know what those mean, but it seems very standardized. Yeah,
whereas if we were to walk into a department store
(01:25):
right now, pick out five different brands of jeans, same size,
guarantee you right now, maybe one of those would fit.
Well yeah, oh maybe maybe it's a long time for
girls to shop. Yeah. Men and women can both relate
to this, women who obviously are buying clothes themselves and
men who have valiantly made the attempt to buy clothes
(01:48):
for women. Um, it is. It is hard. It is
a strange and confusing world of numbers and sizes that
just really don't add up. They don't add up. You
might be, you know, a size six in one store,
size eight from another store, maybe even the same store.
You have to buy like three different sizes. I don't
know what size and nam anymore. I just I just
try to get into a zen state before I walk
(02:10):
into a store and just let it take me. Just
go in there with this main clothes you can handle
and interesting enough. Christ and I when we were researching
women's clothing sizes. Both took a survey that kind of
question like what kind of fits we liked, kind of
styles we liked, and Kristen, You've got like sixty five
possible gene styles would fit you. Yeah, sixty five genes.
(02:31):
It was fine, Like it's like, oh, yeah, I answer
all these questions, We'll find the perfect pair or sixty
five pairs of genes. Yeah, I got seventy two gene results.
There's no way I'm trying on seventy two genes not
gonna happen. So let's get to the bottom of this.
Why are women's clothing size is so hard to decipher?
Why are they why they started to figure out why
can't it be like the good old days, by which
(02:52):
I mean the priest Civil War days. Yes, I don't
know if I call them the good old days, but
but yes, the Civil War does have a lot to
do with the standardization of clothing sizes. Before then, a
lot of clothes were either made in the home or
if you were wealthy enough, you could have a tailor
make clothes for you. But with the Civil War, soldiers
(03:14):
needed uniforms obviously, and home production couldn't exactly keep up
with demand, and so then you start having the mass
production of uniforms, which then led to standardized standardization of
men's sizes because they're like, well, if this would be
a lot easier if we could just kind of you know,
stamp out different sizes of men's uniforms and send them off. Yeah,
(03:36):
they took all that data. After the Civil War, men
could buy ready made clothes. Women didn't follow until about
the nineteen twenties, and that's when you know, industrious industrialization
excuse me, was picking up, and you know, companies started
trying to appeal to women, being like, by this dress,
it's already made for you. Yeah, you've got the growing
urban middle class that that's able to afford more of
(03:58):
these clothes. Just you know, advertising is starting to take off.
All of these forces combining to to kick off the
whole retail industry. But they were making all these ready
make clothes with absolutely no data about women's bodies. So
you would send off for your dress, they'd mail it back,
it would it would look like you know, a burlap
sack on you, not necessarily in texture, which is kind
(04:20):
of how a lot of clothes I put on now
that I think are my size look on me but
burn clothes. So between nineteen and nineteen fifty two, the
Mail Order Association of America in conjunction with the National
Bureau of Standards, organized this massive survey of women's measurements
(04:43):
and they collected all of the data. I think it
was sixteen thousand women that participated in this study, uh,
to figure out what exactly women's clothing sizes were. Yeah,
and they also took some data during World War Two
from what the Women's Army Corps. They used the volunteer
years from that organization to also you know, feed into
the data. But regardless where the data came from, it
(05:05):
was mostly from young Caucasian women, not very ethnically diverse results,
not taking into account how your body changes as you age.
It was sort of these very small subsets of women
who determined the original standard sizes, right, but nevertheless they
would take They took fifty nine measurements from each volunteer
(05:26):
and the studies were published um by the U. S
d A under the title Women's Measurements for Garments and
Pattern Construction, and those are still used today. If you're
a sewer, patterns that you buy in the store still
use those original sizes, which go from eight to thirty eight.
But one thing that you'll notice if and I I can,
I can speak personally to this. My mom was a seamstress,
(05:49):
still is a seamstress, and she would make dresses for
me and I remember we a couple of years ago.
I wanted I wanted to dress, and we decided that
we would we would work on one together, and so
we went to the store and picking out the pattern.
Finding the right size. Pattern was slightly traumatic because since
it's based on these old body measurements, I had to
(06:12):
go up a few sizes than I normally would. You're
wearing a thirty eight. Yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't very honestly,
wasn't very happy about it. But it's because, like you said,
it's really just patterns that are that follow these standards now,
because if you walk into a store an eight back
in nine certainly isn't the eight that you'll find today.
And the very reason that happened is probably because of
how you felt when you bought that pattern for your dress.
(06:35):
Is it made you feel bad about a number, and
so you know, brands figured out that women don't want
to buy clothing that's really high up on the scale. So,
as Kristen said, what was a size eight may now
be a size zero simply because people have figured out
that women are vain about what size they are, right,
And I think what you're referring to is vanity sizing.
Vanity sizing, and it's it's sort of a hot topic
(06:57):
of debate in the fashion world. I've read some arguments
this week that people who say it doesn't exist are
the people who say there's no way it doesn't exist
when their stores they're selling size zero's size like zero zero. Yeah,
it's small. There's a definite trend. I mean, according to
an article on msnbc dot com, a size eight in
nineteen fifty translated to a size four in the nineteen seventies,
(07:20):
and today that same size eight is a double zero,
which is kind of hard to believe when you consider
a statistic UH from the U. S Department of Health
and Human Services, as reported in Real Simple magazine, looked
at women from nineteen sixty two to two thousand and two,
and their height had gone up one inch and their
weight had gone up more than twenty four pounds. So
(07:40):
we're somehow getting bigger and our clothes are getting smaller. Right.
I think the average woman's size today is a fourteen. Yeah,
Whereas it used to be the eight was the was
considered the the average average size. But I guarantee you
if you try to go vintage shopping and you put
on an eight, uh, it's gonna be tight. But it's
interesting you mentioned the size of eight, Kristen, because we're
(08:02):
reading about how close our size today and manufacturers work
off the assumption that eight is sort of the midpoint,
despite the fact that, as you say, it's probably closer
to fourteen, right, Molly. According to Tim Gunn of Project
Runway Fame, uh, the process for even designing a woman's
garment starts with the designer making a sketch of the
(08:22):
idea and then uh, they enlist a quote unquote fit model,
who is a person who represents the company's ideal midpoint size,
which is, like you said, that size eight. But this
is where it might get tricky because different designers might
use a different silhouette. Some fit models might have, you know,
(08:46):
broader shoulders or narrower hips, or larger thighs, whatever, whatever
it is. Because each designer has an idea of how
they want their garments to look on our bodies. So
that's why you you still get variations even among the
fit size eight. Right. And you know, because these women
their job is to be a size eight, they may
not be a size eight like a real world women.
(09:07):
A real world woman is a size eight, right, because
you could walk into any number of stores in the
size aid could actually fit all different sizes of them.
And but as you say, the designers do care how
their clothes look, which is why I'm guessing. I mean,
I don't want to point any fingers, but I think
that the designers seem to care more about how the
clothes look for the smaller sizes, and then they just
(09:28):
kind of multiply up for the heavier sizes. Yeah, they
try to do everything in uh in proportion, like as
the as the waiste gets larger than the arms get longer.
But it's really not even know, Yeah, that's not how
our our bodies grow. So now today we have this
situation where sizes are just all over the place, and
(09:51):
some governments want to do something about it. Yeah, this
is a time and we should be modeling Spain. Yeah,
Spain has really can taking the lead in this women's
clothing size standardization because if you remember, I believe it
was in two thousand seven, Spain actually banned um extremely
thin models from walking the catwalk in there in their
(10:13):
fashion week, and the Minister of Health then took it
one step further by calling for the standardization of women's
clothing sizes based on these real world female measurements because
he thought that it reflected poorly on or promoted poor
body image for younger consumers especially, and he was calling
(10:33):
for this not only from mass market retailers but also
for the smaller designers as well, so that an eight
isn't eight, isn't eight, no matter where you shop. So
it'll be interesting to see how how that actually plays out.
And there have also been efforts in the US and
the UK as well, Molly too kind of revamp the
the initial survey that we were talking about that took
(10:54):
place um in at the mid century to update those
clothing sizes because, like you said, it was mostly Caucasian women,
which is not representative of the population. Yeah, and you
know what's cool about this, Christen, They used scanners. Scanners, yes,
full body scanners, Like there's this company h they have
what's it called the T two t TC two TC
(11:18):
two T two is the terminator sequel um. So you'd
walk into the scanner and all this like uh technology,
bursts of white light that I don't quite understand. Text
stuff can cover this for us. Yeah, well I'm Christians
just looking at me blankly when I started talking about
white light. But white light would capture your body and
would make your body into like a series of dots essentially,
(11:39):
and then the manufacturers would know how two dots were related,
and that would be the measurement, as opposed to just
putting a tape measure around your waist and calling that
your measurement. They would look at ratios, they would look
at where things were located and which things were higher
and lower on some people, um, and that was how
they would do measurements. So the vision some of these
(12:00):
people had was that you could get a scan have
it put on like a hard drive, and you could
walk around the stores and put it into like their
scanner complementary device. I guess and say, this is my body,
find clothes that fit me, and you can find the
exact clothes. But that isn't that's not exactly how things
have happened. That does not sound cheap. So I'm guessing
(12:20):
that was one factor in scanning technology not really getting
off the ground. But one thing that didn't come out
of this, I believe it was the size USA was
the name of this survey, including the white light high
tech scanners that we obviously know a lot about. Um
was that it intentionally included more minority women. They actively
(12:41):
sought out African American women, Latino women, who now make
up a much larger percentage of the population than they
did in the nineteen fifties, to actually get a representative
look at what a woman's body in the US looks like.
And you know, they're finding that women are like snowflakes.
There really are no to a like. I don't know
we'll ever get to the point where a size eight
(13:01):
is a size eight is a size eight. But I
think the important thing that could come out of this
is that we learned that size eight is not the midpoint.
The study found that only ten percent or less than
ten percent and women met an ideal size eight, So
that should not be the standard for which we based
all our clothing sizes, right, And there was an article
on this in the Atlantic Vie Virginia postural, and there
(13:23):
was an interesting quote that she uh that she made
which said that clothing creates the illusion that bodies fit
an esthetically pleasing form, that clothes actually cover up the
natural shape of our bodies. And I think that's important
to keep in mind, Like you said, bodies as it's
kind of cheesy as it sounds, bodies are like snowflakes.
(13:44):
There's not an actual standard size of a woman's body.
With a man, it might be easier to to break
it down into a waste and you know, in seam
but there we just had a lot more curves to
work with, Molly. Let's face it, we do, so you know,
it's it's kind of an unfortunate end to the podcast
because we don't have any sort of grand solution for this.
(14:05):
You really do have to basically try on all these
sizes and I find want that fits right and if
you feel crazy that you're walking into a store and
you put on you know, the size eight, and maybe
fact matter is it might be bigger than it used
to be because as you know, Americans are growing larger.
Um companies are trying to cater to that by by
downsizing their sizes. You're not You're not crazy, No, not crazy.
(14:26):
It's just women's clothing sizes are not standard. Going back
to that initial standardizing effort that we were talking about
that started really in the early twentieth century, that was
thrown out completely in Yeah, it just wasn't it wasn't accurate. Yeah,
so we might see I don't know, maybe in the
(14:47):
next few years, with the Size USA survey and all
these fantastic scanners we have, we might see maybe a
little more standardization. But I gotta say, don't hold your
breath for for a while. We can move to Spain,
because we to Spain. I'd love to move to Spain.
They have afternoon naps, yes, don Ces and Molly before
we before we go head out and try to sneak
(15:07):
a SISA and how stuff works offices. I have to
say something to men, because the idea for this podcast
came from a male listener who was asking about women's
clothing sizes. And you know what, um, take all of this,
take all of this to heart. When you're thinking about
whether or not you want to buy a lady in
your life a piece of clothing, Maybe you just stick
(15:27):
with perfume or shoes. Shoes sizes, those are easy to
figure out, yeah, um, or just take her with you,
Take her with you maybe to a tailor. Yeah, so
you can get some romantic honey, We're gonna go to
a tailor, so you're close hip perfectly to a habadasha. Well,
if you want to learn more about clothing style and
(15:50):
just good old fashioned anatomy, you can head over to
how stuff works dot com. And as always, if you
have a question or comment for me and Molly, please
send us an email at mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com. And finally, if you want to read
even more stuff that is on mine and Molly's minds,
(16:10):
you should check out our new blog called how to
Stuff and of course you can find that at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
(16:30):
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
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