Calculation: It's a Problem

I wear a size 10, which I think makes me thinner than the average American woman, but it drives me crazy. I don’t think of myself as a size 10. My identity (and birthright) is somewhere in the 4/6 range. That’s who I am, a 4/6 who somehow slipped into a size 10 body somewhere in my 20s. And then again, in my late 20s. And again in my 30s.

My favorite little black dress, which I refuse to let go, is tagged a size 4. Will I ever get to wear it again? I would need to lose… let’s see… 60% of something, to go from a 10 to a 4.

And so I give you the psychological cruelty of American clothing sizes. Our brains know about proportions and ratios, and when we go shopping, and we’re fitting into 10s rather than the historically purchased 8s, our brains quietly calculate that we’ve grown roughly 25%.

This is clearly inaccurate, but that doesn’t matter. We’re smart. Our brains crunch the numbers and numbers don’t lie. We feel this inaccuracy as true. And it doesn’t feel good.

If this doesn’t apply to you, if you’re an American woman who doesn’t take any meaning at all from the number on your clothing tags, good for you. You’re either naturally and effortlessly fit or you have spent a lot of money on therapy. Either way, you’re not normal.

For the rest of us, it was part of our proper socialization. And it sucks.

Chico’s tries to skirt the size issue (no pun intended) by making their own sizes. Unfortunately, their sizes make the effects even worse. With 0, 1, 2 and 3 being all that’s available, your percentages get skewed even more.

In continental Europe, they’re more sensible. (That statement is true on so many levels, but I mean it as it pertains to this subject.) An American 10 is marked as a 38, 40 or 42, depending on which country you’re in.

A few American clothing companies are seeing the value in the European approach. Lucky Jeans are my current godsend. When I went from an 8 to a 10, god bless them, I was really only going from a 29 to a 30. I’d only grown 3%. That, I can live with.

I don’t know what the 29 and 30 are supposed to apply to, and it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s a moving target. Clothing companies want us to feel good when we try on their clothes, so they keep drifting the actual sizes downward, so that yesterday’s 8 is now a 6 and we get a little boost from feeling like we’ve lost 20% and so we buy it. Even though we haven’t changed at all. It’s called size inflation. Seriously, it’s not just you – the sizes keep changing.

How do we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of the numbers? First, catch yourself. Consciously calculate the percentage (“Hmm, 6 to 8, that’s a chunk”). Then remind yourself that it’s a trick, and it actually means your waist has grown an inch. One lousy inch!

You probably have the clock in your car set 5 minutes ahead to help you get places on time. Even though you know it’s 5 minutes ahead, it doesn’t matter – your brain still treats it as true, at least some of the time. This is similar, just reversed. Remember that the clothing tags are “set ahead,” and that an inch is no big woop.