I am an awful shopper. It's not that I don't love clothes or enjoy putting together a new outfit, I just get fed up of not being able to find a thing to fit and there's nothing like the disappointment of yet another Top Shop number being too long to put a dampener on my day. I still don't quite get how a piece of clothing can be too big overall yet still uncomfortably snug in all of the wrong places (starting to regret that green & blacks Easter egg now...). Suffice to say I fully understand the sizing woes that shopping can bring and so when Cosmo printed an article about vanity sizing I read on with interest.
Basically, the jist of the article is that shops are appealing to our constant quest for skinniness and labelling clothes with smaller sizes. As well as being a bit ridiculous (yet an effective sales technique) it can also have negative effects on our health as it can be hard to detect a weight gain when your clothes are suggesting nothing's changed. So far so good. It's important for magazines to highlight issues beyond the latest trends and celebrity gossip and I applaud Cosmo for touching upon something many of us would rather ignore. However, like many articles, it was fairly unbalanced and not very representative of the female population as a whole (I know this wouldn't have been easy but they could have at least tried!).
The majority of us know that finding the correct clothing size is only half of the battle and that searching for an outfit to flatter your shape can be a different struggle altogether. We're all individuls and people are rarely the same size all over. The female body is too complex to simply adhere to a particular size and, when you struggle to find trousers that accommodate your hips without drowning your legs, the number written on the label suddenly becomes less relevant. Believe me, I would gladly buy something in a size bigger if it meant it fitted well. Cosmo have made an assumption that all women simply want is to be a dress size smaller when in actual fact I'm sure most of us have body parts we're perfectly happy with and would just like clothing shops to acknowledge that size isn't the only variation between different bodies.
Cosmo then goes on to criticize the fact that 'apple' shapes (those which are a little bigger around the middle) can still call themselves a size ten thanks to vanity sizing. As an 'apple' I've come to terms with the fact that all the sit ups in the world won't give me Britney's abs and so I don't appreciate being made to feel that I don't have a right to fit into a size ten (and if I can it must be down to vanity sizing because of course all size tens have flat tummies and no hips). Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I think it's a little contradictory that a magazine suddenly points the finger at one specific body shape in the very issue that is supposedly focussing on making their readers feel good about their bodies regardless of imperfections. They are correct in saying that fat around the middle is more unhealthy than fat elsewhere, however they neglect to point out that many females will struggle to shift every ounce of excess weight around this area thanks to Mother Nature and her plan to make our bodies fit for carrying a child (this seems slightly unfair when I don't even know if I want kids yet but that's a different issue altogether!).
This article also made me project some of my anger onto my favourite shops. I mean I appreciate Top Shop wanting to make size 16's feel good about fitting into a size 14 but what about those at the other end of the scale who struggle to find clothes small enough? I am by no means thin and so it really frustrates me when clothes are too big just because some idiot has decided that the only way to keep women happy is to pretend they are a size or two smaller than they actually are. Why not train sales assistants to be more complimentary, or have better lighting in the changing rooms, rather than selling us lies to make us feel skinnier? Or even better, start catering to different shapes as well as sizes because one size definitely does not fit all.
