Clothing Size is NOT Worth It
If clothing or body size is something that causes you distress, perhaps this is not the post for you. I discuss my struggles with clothing, my revelations, and ways I still struggle with these types of thoughts. I try my best not to mention specific weights or measurements.
The lightest I’ve ever weighed was at the upper limit of a “normal” BMI. I could sometimes squeeze into a small, but looking back I know I was fooling myself because the fit was always just slightly wrong. I believed in the fallacy that if I could physically fit my body into the smaller size that it was the correct size for me regardless of if I could move my arms around or sit comfortably. I viewed myself as wrong for needing a larger clothing size. Ready-to-wear clothing, which is just clothing off the rack / straight out of the store, is modeled to fit a particular “average” person that the company making the clothing has decided matches their average customer. This is why a fashion brand may have a completely different fit than an athletic brand for something as simple as a t-shirt. Because I have mass in my upper body, which has become pronounced as I’ve gained muscle, I know I cannot expect to fit into particular fabrics, brands, or styles for ready-to-wear clothing. In some ways this makes shopping easier, and in others I am endlessly frustrated.
I know logically that every woman struggles with this, literally no woman can go into a store and get a perfect fit. Nobody discusses this though. Curated instagram posts of skinny young women would have you believe that they never have fit issues. They do. Or at least, I like to think that they do. They’re only human, like me, so they probably have some kind of fit issue.
{This is where I would put an image of the hiker ideal that I see littered in my feeds. I cannot bring myself to pick somebody and subject them to my blog post. I will never be her.}
{This is where I would put an image of the hiker ideal that I see littered in my feeds. I cannot bring myself to pick somebody and subject them to my blog post. I will never be her.}
One of the major obstacles I’ve dealt with over the last 6 years is clothing. Clothing size, clothing fit, wrestling with if I should make my own clothing. I’d think to myself, okay so if I can get down to a weight or body size that I feel comfortable with, then I can make my own clothing. It is my fool’s promise to myself. I spent a lot of time on online forums for weight loss and fashion advice in my early 20s. It was part of my foolish errand to become what I perceived as a worthy woman. The advice that was doled out in excess, and to some extent is still offered unthinkingly, is to simply take all your clothing to a tailor or “just” learn to sew, as if this is a simple task.
I’d think to myself, okay so if I can get down to a weight or body size that I feel comfortable with, then I can make my own clothing. It is my fool’s promise to myself.
Sewing is a skill, and fitting clothes is an even more difficult skill even when you don’t have hangups about how your body looks. When I was distressed over how clothing fit me, the last thing I wanted to hear was that the only answer to my problems was to dedicate hundreds of hours, hundreds of dollars in materials to learn an entirely new skill that I’d have to teach myself with no in-person outside help. Fitting clothing isn’t taught in some night class I could easily take. I didn’t want to have to shell out hundreds of dollars on tailoring when the most crucial point of fit for me - the shoulders - most tailors refuse to touch. Only after spending this amount of time and money, the anonymous forum posters promise, will you have a perfect fit and then finally, finally, I might love myself. Only then, I might be worthy of being asked out on a date. Like I said, a foolish mindset for a foolish young woman. But I ate it up, internalized it. Some days I still slip backwards into this mindset. It is not an easy thing to escape.
What is an inch of cloth to your indomitable spirit?
When I stopped trying restrictive diets and stepped away from these online spaces, I did a lot of work to analyze my erroneous thinking. One of these steps involved an objective look at the difference between sizes. If you ever review a size chart when online shopping, take a long look at each size. See how a medium might be just 1” different from a small or a large? I wondered how I allowed such a small amount of cloth get in the way of esteem.
Is an inch of cloth a mountain or a molehill?
Next, I learned more about the mass manufactured clothing industry, its pitfalls, and its boons. There’s many videos on YouTube from excellent video essayists discussing how premium brands that have “good” quality clothing simply just negotiate for a better cut from the same fabric as the “lesser” quality brands. Have you ever gone to a budget store and the jeans just twist all around your leg? That is entirely up to the quality of the fabric cut made for that particular pair of jeans. You might pull something off the same exact rack, in the same exact size, and not have that issue at all simply because of where the machine cut the fabric. It isn’t you, it’s the clothes.
Another avenue of research I explored is how historical clothing is constructed. Before mass manufacturing, the fashions were much slower and pieces were meant to last for much longer. People either had somebody to make clothes for them, or clothing was made in the home. The clothing was also much more lenient for changing body shape with ties and laces rather than the ultra-tight-spandex type clothing we have now. Now, I love my leggings, but some days I wonder if life would be easier if I could just literally change the size of my shirts after lifting instead of having to keep multiple sizes. So, that “perfect fit” historical clothing took much more time to make, it was more expensive, it lasted you much longer, and it could change shape with you. Again: It’s not you, it’s the clothes.
The final reflection I have about my relationship with clothing size is media consumption. If you were hitting puberty anywhere around the early 2000’s, you know what I’m talking about. To some extent, we are still in a stranglehold by the constant carousel of skinny actresses. I won’t pretend that it’s not difficult for me to look at Hollywood stars or other women who are sizes 00-4, a body size and type which is still elevated by the popular media. I have never been that size range, and I likely never will be. I am acquainted with women who do fit that size range, and they have fit issues too. I still have bouts of insecurity and jealousy when they have the perfect pictures where they get to just become part of the image rather than a focus of it, simply by existing as a smaller woman, a woman that is the accepted size. When I’m in photos it has to be my face or else it risks being about my body. I don’t get to just exist in a full-length photograph. I have to remind myself many days that I have different goals than they do, our lives are different. When all else fails I remove them from my social media feed. It’s not something I am proud of because it feels like a personal failure, but ultimately it is what I must do to stop my rumination. If you’re out here, reading this, please know that I don’t fault you for my disordered feelings about myself, and this is my struggle regardless of how you personally look.
So when I think about how much time and money I’m willing to spend on clothing, I take into account all these factors - how much effort it would take to learn to fit clothing, how much effort we as humanity put into creating clothing in the past, and how I want to spend my life, my precious time. The question becomes: what am I willing to sacrifice in service to a size tag?
For me, I would have to sacrifice my enjoyment of weightlifting, I would have to sacrifice hours to monitor and ultimately punish myself for my caloric intake, I would have to take up exercise that I don’t enjoy, and ultimately sacrifice my mental health through spiraling self-critical thought.
It’s not worth it. Perfect fit is not worth the struggle to me.
The truth is there is no one body type of an athlete, no one body type of an attractive woman. No body type for a hiker or a runner. You are the doer. You are the mover, the maker. What is an inch of cloth to an indomitable spirit?
I like to look at images of athletes to remind myself that they don’t even look the same. Some I’d never see in marketing materials that usually cross my path. There are so many different and interesting shapes we can all be, so why am I so fixated on being just one?
Howard Schatz’s Athletes, photographed from 2000 through 2002 (link in image)
Like most people, I’ve decided to settle for good enough when it comes to off-the-rack clothing. I think I will try to learn how to fit clothing, but ultimately I don’t think it will be the norm for my wardrobe. I instead focus on what I can do, my personal records, my creativity. With my skills I can get by in the world. I may not be the strongest or the quickest, or recognized for my work, but it is good enough.