Every woman has at least one item of clothing that they can’t stand shopping for. Swimsuits usually top the list, but shopping for bras and jeans also seems to be pretty widely hated.
Taking your clothes off in the tiny dressing room and staring critically at yourself in multiple mirrors isn’t most people’s idea of a good time, and it’s frustrating when you can’t find anything you like or when nothing seems to look flattering on you. But, the absolute worst thing about shopping for clothes when you’re a woman is this: none of us have any idea what clothing size we actually wear.
When men purchase pants, they need to know two numbers: the measurement of their waist and the length of their inseam. Any store, any brand, any style, a man can walk in and tell a store employee what size he wears.
When women shop for pants, it’s a shot in the dark. Are these junior’s sizes or women’s sizes? Does this brand run big or small? Sizes are completely arbitrary and not even consistent across the same brand or style. I have, on multiple occasions, tried on two pairs of jeans in the same exact brand and style but in different shades of blue, only to find that they fit differently and I needed a larger size in the darker jeans than in the lighter wash.
It doesn’t help that sizes have changed over the years. The implementation of “vanity sizing” has caused the numbers on the clothes we wear to get smaller, even as the average waistline gets larger.
At least according to the use of the word “vanity” in the phrase, one would assume that this was done to make us feel better about ourselves or to sell us more clothes.
But, I don’t recall being asked if not knowing what size I wear because the numbers keep changing would help my self-esteem. No one gave me a survey to see if I’d happier because I was wearing a smaller number or if I’d storm off in a huff and refuse to wear pants ever again because the number was larger.
And of course, not every clothing company has gone along with the vanity sizing, or at least not to the same extreme.
When I was in college, I went to a major department store to shop for dress pants for my new internship. In one purchase, at one store, I bought myself two pairs of dress pants: one a size zero and the other a size ten. They both fit perfectly.
Which makes the notion that women are still asked – at stores and by friends – “What size do you wear?” as if it’s an easy answer that doesn’t encompass a range of 10 or more different numbers seem pretty ridiculous.
Even clothes like shirts that come in small, medium and large aren’t at all standardized for women.
While my husband can pretty reliably pick up a size large shirt in nearly any clothing store and find that it fits him, I almost always have to try on multiple sizes of the same shirt to figure out which size I need.
I once spotted a sweater in a chain store that looked to be about my size. I tried it on and found that it fit, and then looked at the tag.
It was marked 2X, though someone had crossed out the 2 with a permanent marker. Most of my shirts at home are smalls and mediums, but apparently in at least one brand, I wear a 2X.
There’s no shortage of jokes about how much time women spend shopping — we’re all familiar with the stereotype of a woman spending an hour in a dressing room while her poor, hen-pecked husband sits outside holding her purse.
Perhaps the reason is that for the life of us, none of us can figure out what clothing size we wear. We’re not necessarily spending hours trying on clothes because we want to, we’re doing it because we have to.
If women’s clothing sizes were actual measurements, clothes shopping would be a whole lot easier and less time-consuming.
But until then, I’m in the market for some new jeans, so I’m heading to the mall. See you in about eight hours.
For more from Bethany Neumeyer visit I Was Promised More Naps, Facebook and Instagram.
