6/25/2017 0 Comments What Size Are You?One of the questions I dreaded answering the most in school had absolutely nothing to do with academics: “What size t-shirt do you wear?” I was a very involved student, and inevitably, every single club and activity required a t-shirt. I hated it. Why? Because it was also inevitable that the method of ordering said t-shirt was a teeny-tiny, bubbly girl walking around with a clipboard and sign up sheet, asking people for their sizes and recording them in front of everyone else. When that girl came up to me, I always faced a soul crushing internal struggle regarding how to handle the situation. Option 1: I could save face and order a smaller size than I actually needed, but never wear the shirt. The problem: It was pretty clear that I didn’t fit into a small or medium, so my peers would know I was ordering the wrong size, and if I ordered a large (still too small), they would judge me for having to wear such a big size. Option 2: I could mumble my size quietly to the girl taking orders. The problem: She’d probably ask me to speak up, in which case everyone would be MORE focused on my answer than they initially had been. It would also be incredibly clear to those around me that I was ordering a size with which I was uncomfortable. No one mumbles that they need a size small t-shirt. Option 3: I could tell her I was not ordering a t-shirt at all. The problem: “Gasp! You don’t want to show your affiliation with our club?!” or “If you don’t order a t-shirt, you can’t participate in _______ event” or “But everyone else is ordering one…” Option 4: Just tell her that I need a size XXL and own it. The problem: No one in high school has developed the confidence to “own” the things about which they are insecure. I usually went with some sort of combination of the above. Usually, I mumbled that I needed a size XL, which was a little too small, but with some stretching before I donned it and some not-so-subtle tugging throughout the day, I could make it work. Even today, when I am a thinner and much more confident version of myself, I feel an initial panic when I am asked to order a t-shirt. But why? Why does revealing one’s clothing size produce so many negative emotions? As a society, we often use this to make an assessment regarding body image. The smaller the size, the prouder we are of our bodies. Conversely, the larger the size, the more embarrassed we are. Working in a high school, I cannot tell you how many girls I see parading around in their size 0 jeans and bragging about the size on the tag. But do I ever hear a young lady who wears a size 10 announcing it? No. That would never happen. Attaching any value at all to a clothing size is absolutely obnoxious in today’s society. Clothing companies have skewed what sizes mean so much that there is no way to pinpoint a person’s “size.” When I go to Old Navy, for example, I can easily fit into a size small t-shirt, and sometimes even x-small. However, I generally need to look for a size 10 or 12 pair of jeans. If I hop over to WalMart, I’m probably going to find jeans in a size 6 or 8 that fit me. When ordering from LulaRoe, I can buy an x-small maxi dress, but I have to wear tall & curvy leggings. The pant sizes in my closet range from anywhere between a size 4 and a size 14. My top sizes range from x-small to x-large. So what size do I wear? Well, I guess I wear a size x-smarge OR a 468101214 (shout out to my friend Chris for helping me figure out what to call it!). I know I am not the only one, and I have accepted that clothing sizing is about as consistent as gas prices across the United States. Yet, there are still days when I leave a dressing room feeling a sense of failure or discouragement because I couldn’t squeeze my healthy-sized badonkadonk into a size 6 pair of jeans, or because my biceps and shoulders make me hulk out of that size small. It took me a very long time to accept that the size on the label of my clothing is not what matters. What matters is how I feel in that clothing. In all of the following examples, I feel beautiful, yet the sizes of the clothing I am wearing vary a good bit. Why should we assess the beauty of our figures based on how a particular company cuts their clothing? The size on a clothing label issued by a company distributing product to a nameless, faceless audience does not determine your level of fitness, health, or beauty. Human beings are incredible because of our diversity, and part of that diversity is rooted in our physical appearances. When a clothing company produces a product, they choose a single measurement from which each item is cut and then distribute millions of replicas based on that number in the hopes that some part of our incredibly varied population of shapes and sizes might deem them an acceptable fit. They don’t care about individual characteristics that make a person unique, so why should individuals care if their measurements are not right for them? They shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. There should be no embarrassment attached to having to wear a size 10 jeans because you are curvy. Instead, there should be some pride in the fact that you don’t fit a mold that some money-grubbing business indiscriminately attached to a size.
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