Weighing In

Lately, dressing rooms have become battlegrounds. Fighting to fit into a shirt or squeezing into a pair of jeans, leaves us completely bewildered by sizing standards. A recent article in the UK Sun proves once and for all that most women don’t fit into average designer sizes.
As the article reports, researchers in Spain compared over 10,000 body shapes to the sizes found in an average shop. The results? Not pretty. Four out of ten women could not find clothing that fit. “Too tight” and “too small” were the most commonly heard complaints.
Authorities in Spain plan to replace European sizing with a more universal height, hip, waist and breast measurement. Banking on success, they hope to encourage other European countries to adapt the user-friendly sizes.
On the other side of the spectrum, many high-end designers size clothing generously, causing most women to go down several sizes. Luring women with sizes 2 and 4 when most often they’re a size 6 or 8 is a great way to sell clothes. Or perhaps the larger sizes are just a result of Americans ever expanding waistlines? As the most overweight nation in the world, retailers, especially in economic uncertainty, must begin to follow suit if they hope to sustain loyal customers.
What does this mean for us? Either way, sizing is no longer for the stick thin. Shapes are finally shifting to fit the average female body.