L.L. Bean's Flagship Store (Freeport, Maine)
So Hanna and I spent a three-day weekend up in Maine visiting her parents, who live outside of Norridgewock in a lovely cabin they built themselves. It was beautiful weather on Friday and, as we often do, we stopped in Freeport on our drive north. Freeport, for those of you who don’t know, happens to be the town in which L.L. Bean has their flagship store. (More accurately, the store is the town … which has been ingulphed by destination shopping tourism … but that’s a story for another post.) What can we say: we’re a sucker for their stuffed animals.*
While we were at the store this time, we noticed that they’d done a bit of re-arranging, and one of the new sections of the store — where there used to be a coffee shop — is now women’s clothing. More specifically, it’s women’s clothing, sizes 18W-24W.
That’s right. If you’re looking for sizes over 18 Regular, then you get a whole separate section just to yourself.
Segregation much?
I’ve noticed this recently in a couple of clothing stores, where the sizes above some cut-off (usually between size 16-18) are either not stocked in-store, meaning you have to order, in-store or online, the clothing you want rather than having the chance to try it on at the store. And while you can return items, usually, without penalty if they don’t fit there’s still the hassle of having to do an exchange, etc. Hassle that could be avoided if they stocked larger clothing sizes.
While I don’t have data on this, I find it difficult to believe that these stores are stocking sizes based exclusively on what sells the most. I’d buy that if, in addtion to the larger sizes, they also put the smaller sizes in a separate section. Which — at Bean’s at least — is not the case (though I realize “petite” sizes are a long-standing thing until themselves, as are “tall” sizes). You still find the smalls and the extra-smalls, the 2s and 4s, etc., in the regular women’s clothing. I find it hard to believe there are more 2s wandering around the world these days than there are 18s or 20s.
I’d love to have Harpy readers’ observations about clothing segregation (or inaccessibility) at clothing stores. Can you generally walk into a clothing store and find the sizes/shapes that you need? Can your partners? Friends? If you can’t, where do you end up shopping for clothes … and how does the experience of being forced online, to mail-order, or into a different section of the store (or a different store entirely) feel? Clothing availability is a powerful force in our culture helping to shape our assumptions about what “normal” bodies do (and should) look like. In what ways do you wish you could tell the clothing retailers “just stop it already!”
*this visit we came away with a plush owl we think might be named Mycroft.
If I’m completely honest, I might see their point from a logistical standpoint. The arbitrary cut-offs are the annoying/offensive part, but if I were a manager of a department store it would make sense to me to have petites in corner A, tall in corner B, “average” in corner C and plus sizes (though I hate the term) in corner D if nothing else so that nobody is having to climb through 16 racks of 2-12 before finding the sizes they need.
I was at the Gap this weekend and was increasingly annoyed that I had to move an entire stack of XS and S just to get to the M and L on the bottom (in the event there WERE M and Ls). It would have been more convenient to just go to the Ms and Ls section of the store (if it existed) and find what I needed on the front of the rack or top of the pile.
Maybe a store with an L and + section could even be optimized for accessibility, with larger dressing room cubicles for logistical ease of use. It’d be optimal for women with children, strollers etc or disabilities too.
I’m someone who has difficulty finding things that fit and look good due to my size and shape too, and while it would annoy me on one level to be set aside, provided the clothing options provided were the same in terms of selection, not having to even deal with 2s and 4s might be a shopping bonus.
I wish stores would sort clothes by size only (ie 0-4 section, 6-10 section, 12-16 section, etc.). It’s annoying to flip through a rack of clothes and find a 2 followed by a 12 followed by a 6 or maybe a 16. Plus that way nobody’s size would be discriminated against since they would ALL be sorted that way.
I’m an in-betweenie – about 14-16. The cutoff in straight-sized stores is 12-14, and plus-sized stores start at 16-18. How do I feel? I feel like I don’t exist.
Where do I shop? Online, New York & Company, Torrid, Lane Bryant, and Dress Barn. Occasionally I can find something good in a department store but not often, so I rarely even go in. And it’s hard having the funky personal style I want – I have a hard time finding clothes and I am a TERRIBLE seamstress. But I’m having to get better, because, really, my options are thinning (HA) as my style is evolving.
I understand the marketing and logistical constraints, I really do. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t SUCK.
I tend to agree with Rabbit–I have no problem if they wanted to lump everything size 2-4 or everything size 16-18 into one area, because it would spare me having to go through stacks of clothes in the hopes of finding something my size. One of the things I love about shopping sample sales is that they do just that—there’s a size 2 rack, a size 4 rack, etc. so that you know exactly what’s on offer. I don’t really like shopping, so I appreciate the convenience of that.
My pet peeve where retail size-ism is concerned is that different stores/designers have wildly different interpretations of dress size. So although my measurements and weight don’t change, depending on the store, I might wear a 2 or a 6 (at JCrew recently, I fit into a 0, which is fucking ridiculous because I am not that small).
Over the past 15 years there’s been a creep towards larger clothes being labelled with ever-smaller sizes. I’m sure size-ism is to blame, because stores believe a woman will be happier if she can fit into a 6 than if she can fit into a 10 and will likely shop there again if that’s the case (and they’re probably right, unfortunately).
I can generally find things that fit me in stores, although knowing what size is often difficult. I find the extent of vanity sizing really depends on the audience of the store — I’ve browsed at stores that are directed at people a little older than I am where I’m lucky if an extra small even approaches fitting me whereas I’m usually about a medium or sometimes a large at, like, Wet Seal (where I used to get party clothes in college ahem I no longer shop there). The one thing I have a ton of trouble finding in stores is bras (AARGH) and I absolutely refuse to buy a bra online without having tried it on. Generally I can find things that fit my proportions in terms of height, hips, waist, etc, but the boobs…to be honest, what bothers me most about clothes shopping is how many things will have seams that are supposed to divide your bust from the rest of your torso and just totally hit me wrong. I would love to wear clothes like that because I think it’s really cute and it does make me feel bad that I can’t find anything that seems to take my proportions into account, especially because what I hear from other women a lot is that I have the proportions that they’re told they’re supposed to want. So that can be frustrating. But I work around it most of the time.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, can’t buy clothes in almost any store. He’s about 6’3” and *very* skinny and has really long arms. He can usually find a couple things in hipster-ish stores like H&M but he hates shopping a ton so getting him to try things on for long enough to find something is often kind of an ordeal. I think he wishes he could just go somewhere where they had clothes organized in a grid by arm length, chest circumference, etc and he could just choose exactly what would fit him and be done with it. ;_; One of my uncles got him a sweater as a present that he had to return because it was too short in the arms and too wide in the body and the store literally had no shirts that would fit him. He had to get ties instead.
I think what bothered me so much about the separate section wasn’t the organization by size per se (obviously you get “tall” and “petite” sections, etc.) but that it was marked by size, while the other section of the store was just “women’s.” If you are going to arrange everything by size, then you should identify it all that way, rather than having the “women” unqualified and then women-plus-size.
Maybe we’re hyper-sensitized to it, but the signage in this particular layout caught both my attention and Hanna’s.
@Shadow Boxer, I hear you! Hanna falls in that “in between” size and shopping for her, I’ve become SUPER sensitive to the way people arrange their stores and what sizes they stock … because suddenly I can’t assume I’ll find what I need or want for her in the style she likes (or I think looks sexy on her). It’s definitely made me more aware of my social privilege as a person who fits into the “normal” range most of the time.
I have many friends who are in-betweenies or fat, and we all love to go clothes shopping — it’s a fun social activity for us. But there are literally 0 stores that we can shop in together. Either my friend or I will be stuck sitting on the one chair in the dressing room, bored, while the other person tries things on. This can be fun too, of course, but mostly it’s just kind of boring. And I imagine that it’s alienating for my friends, since they’re the bored/excluded ones in straight-size (i.e. MOST) shops and basically ALL the indie/vintage/boutique-y places I love. Plus I’ve never really felt like people in plus-size shops are judging me harshly for being in the store, whereas I have no doubt my friends have been judged for their mere presence in a straight-sized shop that “obviously doesn’t have anything that would fit *you*.”
It would be wonderful if available fashion choices reflected more diverse bodies for about a million more important reasons, but damn I would love to be able to go shopping with my friends without it being all fraught. I sometimes feel like just by going on a shopping outing together, I’m rubbing my thin privilege in their faces. Thanks, fashion retail industry!
I hear everyone about the way shops are laid out for clothes – that women includes those who fit the particular sizes included in that section, and then the “plus size” is located elsewhere.
I try where possible to shop for clothes in places that have a variety of sizes and not some arbitrary cut off point, usually size 12 or 14 (in Australian sizes, which are different to the US).
A friend has taken to buying maternity pants, she finds that they fit better for the more voluptuous women, and she can get more wear out of them. To me it would seem easier if clothes were made and sold that enabled the diversity of body shapes to be represented on the rack.
“I find it hard to believe there are more 2s wandering around the world these days than there are 18s or 20s.”
I dunno, I mean, have you been to Asia? I’m willing to bet 2 is one of the most popular sizes in the world!
A friend and I were recently stopped on the street by a fashion week brigade, and their interview questions made me realise just how much distance I (happily) keep between mainstream brands & shops and my own clothing choices. Like some of you also said, I don’t like mall shopping, so I get most of my clothes online from smaller operations. Because of that, I don’t often find myself in an eyeroll-inducing shopping situation…but then the last time I was in [east Asian country], I experienced what a huge pain in the ass shopping is when you’re even the littlest bit bigger than the average size. Most shops in [large east Asian city] carry clothes that are “one size”, aka “teeny” by American standards, so trying to find just about anything to wear was difficult. It definitely made me even more sympathetic to those facing similar situations in the US.
One thing I thought was funny was that, when I tried to buy a bra there (usually A or B size), shop owners would insist that I definitely looked like a C cup, “I’ll have to go find the C cup bras” (cuz they’d have like…four of them). I called it “sexy sizeism”–the shopkeepers seem to have a perception that we American girls all have major curves and wear sexy clothes all the time! They seem to base their stereotypes of us on Sex & the City and Gossip Girl…scary.
I like MKP’s idea for stores being divided into separate & equal sections by size. If that couldn’t happen, I would also be excited to see clothing stores in the US adopt the option of Asian-department-store-style customer service. First of all, the employees love their jobs & fashion and really care about what you like & want; they follow you to the dressing room; wanna see how the clothes look on you; go get similar styles/sizes for you to try. They figure out your personal style is, and try to help you find what you want. It made shopping a lot more fun and easy for me when I didn’t have to dig much through the racks or deal with sizing.
Sorry for the novel/potential incoherentness…/jetlag
Clothing sizes, especially for women, have never been uniform. The tendency is that the pricer the item, the smaller the sizes run regardless of who the clothes will actually fit. It’s frustrating and plays bad games with our heads.
There *is* a judgment implied in the plus-size segregation.
Anytime I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe they’re trying to make my life easier, I remember my first shopping experience in the Seattle Nordstrom. They have great bras. *shrug* In order to get to the bras, I went up three or four levels of escalator, to the very tip top of the building. Just as I was joking with a friend about keeping the “naughty clothes” hidden, we reached the right level and guess what. It was underwear and plus-sizes.
Are they trying to keep their fat femmish customers hidden? Is there another possible reason?
@Dena: I wonder if there’s a perception by Big Retail that fat femmish customers would prefer more privacy when shopping/trying on clothes?
Wow. Size 0??! Does this mean you’re invisible?
@JP: Actually, I think dress size and invisibility are inversely proportional: the larger her dress size, the more invisible a woman is.
I don’t shop stores anymore. Being super plus-sized puts me out of the range of sizes that any store but Catherine’s carries. K-Mart and Target sorta kinda maybe carry plus sizes (usually up to a 24/26), if you can find them (maybe one rack, hidden by the maternity clothes), and Wal-Mart, while they have their plus sizes right out in the open, don’t make them accessible for fat, disabled people (I’m talking racks/tables crowded together so you can’t get in there with a walker or mobility cart unless you don’t care if you knock clothes off the racks or move the racks/tables out of place). And even though WM is carrying Just My Size’s line of clothing, they stop at 4X, which lets me out, I wear a 5X, which means I have to go online to buy what I want. And right now I’m boycotting JMS because they refuse to list the colors available for their stretch satin high cut panties. If you order them, you get whatever colors they have in stock, which depends on whatever colors the manufacturer decides to make (usually black and beige, judging from my last order of 6 pair). When I contacted them about it, the “whatever the manufacturer sends is what we have” line is what I was told, and nothing was said about contacting their manufacturer to get a wider variety of colors. I guess fat women should be satisfied that they even deign to make panties for us at all, we shouldn’t want a variety of colors/prints as well.
@BeckySharper
A very keen observation indeed- and how true.
Hmm. Isn’t LL Bean one of the retailers who have plus and petite sizes in almost everything? In that case I think they should keep organizing stuff by style rather than size.
The whole organization of most department stores drives me crazy, anyway. I’ll make an exception for Nordstrom’s, but usually prefer the smaller stores.
There is a Jerri Blank quote for EVERY occassion.
Oh yes, women’s/plus sizes in department stores are generally located in a remote part of the store – often times in the basement! They are frequently understaffed and – my pet peeve – poorly kept up. I’ve thought a lot about the messiness I often see in the plus size areas and I sense that *sometimes* the employees themselves think being put to work in that department is something of a shame, so they don’t expend much effort in keeping things neat and I think that *for some* the shame of shopping in those departments somehow causes some customers to not take as much care in sorting through and putting things back properly. It all just makes me so sad.
That said, I do think that at shops specifically catering to plus size women (Lane B., Torrid, for example) this does not hold true. In fact, while the clothes in those stores aren’t very much my style, I like shopping there, because the employees are often not fat-phobic and there is often less of the depressing faux-bonding around “oh my fat thighs” and “does this dress make my butt look big” that I often hear in regular stores.
While I would like to see more plus size clothing in general, I think mass-produced clothes will never really be able to fit a large percentage of the population properly – whether that population is fat or not. We just all come in too many different shapes. My fantasy? A return – even a partial return – to custom-made items. Sure, it would be more expensive, but we have become far too used to paying too little for clothing. (Fast fashion anyone?) I would say we now think of clothing as disposable and this just seems so wasteful to me. I would rather have a well-made, properly fitted coat for 40% more than a cheap one that will last only one season – and never really fits right.
To try to help remedy the problems I see in the current shopping market, I always fill out those customer satisfaction surveys you get on your receipts in stores and tell them I would like to see a greater selection of plus size items and a move out of the basement. Anna, I think you are just noticing these things now, but believe it or not, I think things have actually improved over the last couple of years, especially in the higher end department stores, much to my surprise.
As someone who wears a 16W and petite, I am doubly invisible. I can barely find a pair of pants because I’m in the in-between land between the “regular” and “plus” cut off. Then add in the “short” business, and it is a nightmare.
I would give SO MUCH to have clothes set up like a shoe store or thrift store, where you can look at all the options in your size, without digging through all the others. And none of this “plus” sectioning off.
I spent 95% of my life shopping in the average size petite clothes, and in the past 6 years have abruptly had to move 6 sizes up. It’s pretty damn annoying what I have to wade through to buy clothes.
I’ve never been that into clothes, I just want some stuff that fits. Oddly enough to the title of this post, LLBean is one of the few places I can buy clothes and have them consistently fit. So I just buy 10 different colors of the same thing and live with it.
@BeckySharper – re: fat customers preferring privacy, I think there is something to this, too, if only because of shame around buying larger sized clothes.
Despite it being difficult to find clothes that fit me, I can usually find something.
The larger problem is that the clothes are butt-ugly. I don’t understand why the folks who make clothes for larger women insist on huge ugly prints, abstract shapes, and tentlike garments. I may be large-waisted, but there is still a waist there, and I resent being handed a circus tent to dress it in.
I’m 5’3″ and usually wear a petite, and it annoys me to no end that I need a special size for being only 1 or 1-1/2 inches under average height for American women. It occurs to me that the same thing is true for plus sizes, since the average American woman wears the largest straight size. The least they could do is put the sections adjacent to their regular sizes for those who wear both (some stores do.) I’ll do anything to not order clothes, too, so the stores that only have my size on the internet lose out.
@BeckySharper re: giving certain groups of shoppers more privacy to do their shopping … in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, such segregation actually makes folks who need the larger sizes feel more visible than they would if the sizes were simply mixed in with all the others on the rack. You feel like you’re walking into the section with the larger sizes with a neon sign blinking over your head reading “FAT SLOB.” So regardless of retailer intention, segregation doesn’t equal a better shopping experience … at least for the women I know who have reason to look for larger sizes!
@Mrs T … I’m totally with you on the frustration concerning what clothing designers think women are going to want when they’re bigger. As your taste suddenly magically shifts into the worst of the 1980s once you his size 16! WTF? The best fashion advice I’ve ever heard on this subject was a couple of British fashion advisors on NPR once who basically said, “our advice for plus-size women is exactly the same as it is for anyone else.” There’s no reason to have a whole separate set of “rules” for larger people.
There’s only 1 store around here that mixes plus and regular…and the plus is a wee section at the VERY back of the store.
Not only that, but the malls took out one of the last vestiges of fashionable plus sized clothes and replaced them all with motherfucking Hollisters….so now we have to go to the outlets in the boonies.
That store, btw, is starting to make those sizes smaller.
FML.
@annajcook: And, in turn, I’m totally with you on the issue of the separate larger section. It took me years to get up the nerve to walk into a Lane Bryant because it was like broadcasting to the world that I was too fat for regular stores. I was so ashamed of buying larger sizes, that while I was still in the “in-between” stages, I was wearing clothes that were painfully too small, simply because it was emotionally hard for me to shop in the larger section. If there wasn’t that segregation between sizes (and to my earlier point, if the clothes were equally as cute as their straight-size counterparts), I personally wouldn’t have felt so emotional about the whole thing.
The stores I like the best are those with a wide range of sizes, no segregation, and the same clothes for straight and plus sizes. Old Navy, for example, has been fairly successful at this, generally carrying sizes 2-20/XS-XXL in stores (at least in my area). I realize that doesn’t encompass all sizes, but it’s one of the widest ranges I’ve found in any store that doesn’t have a separate plus-size area.
I know it shouldn’t bother me, but it’s remarkable how as plus-size person, shopping at the same store as everyone else makes me feel a little bit more normal.
The answer for my friends, at least of late, has been clothing swaps, usually among a group of similarly-sized (or all incredibly variably-sized) women. Even as a mid-size sedan (vroom vroom), I find that my experience at the swap has made me way more positive and accepting of my body. I think it’s because it’s a group experience, and there’s a lot of talking — I had the same positive experience at the group changing rooms at the thrift store, growing up. I’ve pretty much given up on retail shopping, actually, unless I’m in a brilliantly happy mood.
I grew up shopping at Wal-Mart, and I could never find jeans long enough, even when they actually carried plus sizes. I still can’t. I own three pairs of jeans, all the exact same size and length, that I bought at Lane Bryant. I’m pretty sure I cried, too, when I bought them, at having to pay what, to me, is a huge amount just for clothing that I can actually wear.
My style is blue jeans and political t-shirts. I’m wearing one right now that I bought from a website run by an American Indian group. It has three native women carrying guns, with the words: “HOMELAND SECURITY. Fighting terrorism since 1492.”
I wear 2x in shirts, so I just find them online, sometimes through Northern Sun. The jeans are a nightmare. I’ve been trying to find a pair of size 20 tall cargo pants (jeans or khaki) for *months*, to no avail. At this point, I’d be willing to pay damn near $60 (which is double what I think they’re worth) just to actually own something other than these three pairs of jeans. ._.
If I did shop at some mall store (besides the jeans from Lane Bryant) or retail outlet, I’d be more likely to buy clothes from the men’s section, given my style and the way I manifest my identity as a gender-queer person.
@skada –
Don’t know if you’re OK with this brand…
…but a few colors left in 20 Tall at a pretty good price.
(I shop for other people online when avoiding work. :O)
@PetiteXL – They look very cute, but I think I ought to try to find something in person so I can make sure it fits. Thank you, though. ^^
I’m another shortie (5’2) so I’m in the petite range. I like having them separate, but there is often a much smaller range of trousers, jeans etc, which is annoying.
The thing that really annoys me though, as said upthread, is the variance of sizing and that the more upmarket you go, the smaller the clothes are. I’m a fairly average UK 10 (US 6, I think?), but I have clothes from a UK 6 to a UK 16. If I were even remotely susceptible to size paranoia I’d have been really upset by some shopping experiences.
There’s one shop where I would cheerfully buy their entire stock if it weren’t so expensive; beautiful clothes, just my style – but I’m an L or XL in there. In what universe is someone (in a shop with adult clothes!) who is 5’2, 120lb and 34-24-34 an XL? It sends horrible messages to their younger clientele and fills me with rage.
I’ve never been able to shop at the majority of women’s clothing stores because they don’t carry my size — even department stores here in Canada stop at a 22, so little joy there. I hated shopping for clothes as a teenager because the larger clothes then were really not designed for younger tastes. Shop mostly at two or three stores, and laugh when I do a survey asking me what would need to happen to get me to shop more at mall x. UM, how about having more than one store stock clothes I can actually try on, mmmkay?
Oh no, I understand. I’m 6’0″ with man thighs and shoulders (thanks, Dad), but boobs out into F country. Talls (if they exist) are generally carried online rather than in-store. I don’t think I’ve bought any clothes in-store for two years now. Can’t do it. All the stores that do carry talls in store never have my size, or their talls are still too short. Old Navy’s my best refuge for pants, with eShakti for a variation in tops. If the tunic trend dies again, I’ll cry.
Otherwise, it’s Old Navy jeans and my husband’s t-shirt. Thank goodness we wear the same size in men’s clothes.
@baraqiel – your boyfriend might want to check out the trim fit shirts at Paul Fredrick online. My manpanion is 6’4″ and about 155 lb with long arms, so he has had great difficulty finding clothes that fit. Now almost all his shirts are from Paul Fredrick. Pricey but great quality. There’s even an option for custom-made shirts.
I’m an inbetweenie whose basic uniform is jeans/cords and a t-shirt. And I am lucky enough to live near an awesome thrift store so I buy almost everything there. I hate the mall with a passion. My one bane is bras – have been wearing the same bras for 8 years despite several attempts to buy new ones. They are always SO uncomfortable, despite getting them professionally fitted at Nordstroms. It’s almost time to try again…
1. I understand the convenience of having size ranges separated out so we don’t have to fish through everything.
2. Segregating just the largest sizes, however, is problematic – especially if the mid-range is framed as “normal.”
3. I like to shop at Kohls, because there’s one near my apartment and it’s not too expensive. It is very hard for me to find sizes that are small enough for me there, though. I don’t doubt that fat prejudice influences the decision to carry certain sizes, but there are probably a few other influences as well.
4. Becky, I am also frustrated at the inconsistency of sizing norms. Bras are the worst.
5. baraqiel, your boyfriend’s grid-patterned store idea sounds worth implementing. I’m serious.
6. mischiefmanager, you’re right about the negative correlation between pricing and sizing, at least to a point. It’s frustrating for me because it makes it hard to find cheap clothes that are small enough.
This might be new to LL Bean, but it’s pretty much always been true in department stores in my lifetime, as far as I can remember. Juniors, Misses, Womens. Usually the styles are different too – flirty, vs serious vs “comfy”. And I think there’s a difference between for example a 16 and a 16W, but couldn’t tell you what it is, because I was only in that size range once.
Lucky for me I am not a fashion plate, because in addition to being size 14, I’m also tall. So finding shirts and pants that are long enough is a hassle. When I find something that fits and looks good, I buy it in multiple-so-many colors, and then don’t shop again for 2 years.
I’m irate on behalf of all of you, because I *always* feel like I’m a clothing outcast…because I’m only 5′ tall. I swear that buyers for petite departments seem to think that little old women spring from the womb fully frumped, because there’s rarely anything young or stylish. Also, very few lines actually engineer for petite bodies; it seems like most of them just scale down from regular sizes and that does NOT work. (“This says PETITE, why is the hip curve at my KNEES?!”)
Becky Sharper said: Over the past 15 years there’s been a creep towards larger clothes being labeled with ever-smaller sizes. I’m sure size-ism is to blame, because stores believe a woman will be happier if she can fit into a 6 than if she can fit into a 10 and will likely shop there again if that’s the case (and they’re probably right, unfortunately).
I have proof that this is going on. In stores I’m usually around a 6, depending on brand. When I buy a sewing pattern I wear a 14. And it fits better.
Petite XL, in the early days of mass-produced clothing (late 1800s), there were 3 options: completely custom, off-the-rack, and partially assembled. The pieces of the bodice and skirt (or trousers and jacket) would be mostly assembled, but you could do up the side seams to your measurements. This would help my size-4-waist/size-8-ass problem IMMENSELY.
I’m pretty small and short all over — I can tell you that most companies don’t even carry their smallest sizes in stores (i.e. you can only get them on the website), nevermind putting them in a separate section. I don’t really consider myself a wild anomaly (I’m about 5’1″ and 100 lbs, which is short/skinny but not extremely so), but I have to do 98% of my clothes shopping online.
And even then, I’m sized out of most adult-oriented brands and even some teenager/young adult ones. Express’ 00Short pants? Too big. American Eagle’s XXS? Usually fits, but they don’t carry it in stores. Anthropologie’s 0? Fits about 5% of the time. L.L. Bean is particularly bad — as a Mainer, I’d like to support them, but I’m completely swimming in their PXS. Love their pajama pants, but that’s pretty much all I can wear of theirs.
And don’t get me started on shoes.
So, I guess my point is that the cut-off goes both ways (honestly, size 0/2 at an adult-oriented store is generally not all that small these days), even though the social stigma is mostly only directed in one direction. My guess is that retailers really are just carrying the most commonly-sold sizes (maybe fat women buy less clothes on average, because society does such a thorough job of making them think they won’t look good in anything?).
As for the segregation — it’s been my impression that certain stores (like the L.L. Bean flagship) will carry the “special” sizes normally only found online (i.e. talls, petites, and plus) and that those special sizes are almost always given their own section, presumably because otherwise their intended market would never even suspect they were there. Sizes smaller than 0-2/XS are just never found in stores (except as returns), unless we’re talking about a place like Wet Seal.
And no, I’m not invisible, thanks, although I do feel like it sometimes. The lower left corner of this chart will help you out if you really can’t imagine what a 00 looks like:
http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html
Not so different from a “real” woman, right?
I have very short legs and an extremely long torso. I’m 5’6″ and my husband is 5’10″ but we have the opposite builds, so he’s 4″ taller than me standing up, and I’m 4″ taller than him sitting down. Finding pants that are short enough for my little legs is a nightmare – I wear 3/4 length pants as regular ones sometimes, and finding shirts that are long enough is an equal nightmare. I’ve gotten in trouble at work for showing my stomach because I nearly always have a gap between my shirt and pants especially while sitting down. My husband knows his waist size and inseam – I know a range of numbers that might perhaps fit. It’s so frustrating!
This is really common. I was an in-betweenie for a long time, now in the lower range of the plus sizes, so I’ve been dealing with this first hand lately. A few other examples:
- Old Navy only sells plus size clothes online
- Target and Wal-mart have tiny “women’s” sections, usually relegated to the darkest corner in the stores
- Banana Republic has a special “Men’s Big and Tall” section that sells sizes up to XXL (44W), but only sells women’s clothes up to XL (16)
…and so on. This has also been discussed extensively in the fatosphere. Personally, I believe the isolation or absence of “women’s” sizes has more to do with not wanting their brands to be “tainted” by having fat women seen wearing their clothes or shopping in their stores, than trying to reduce shame felt by fat women. Witness fat women’s frequent experiences with being approached by an anxious sales clerk when they enter a store that doesn’t carry their size. But YMMV.
I’m 5’7″ and my actual size fluctuates, but I’m usually somewhere from the lower middle to the upper part of the straight sizes, or on occasion, plus sizes. But I can’t find anything to fit, ever, because: wide shoulders, skinny-torso/waist-area-plus-rack-of-doom (32F), long-waist-plus-hips, flat butt, long legs, and muscular thighs. But inexplicably skinny calves. So whatever fits my torso, calves, or butt won’t fit over my boobs, shoulders, hips, and thighs. And whatever fits the boobs, shoulders, hips, or thighs will be flapping in the breeze everywhere else and look ridiculous and “unprofessional” (or so it was delicately suggested to me at work once). Even most boots flap in the breeze around my calves. I seriously give up. I’m going to learn how to sew properly and then make EVERYTHING, because I can’t take these @(38&$# stores anymore. I get everything from the slut-shaming for having a small band size/large cup size (thanks Victoria’s Secret!) to the unsubtle fat-shaming when the salesperson brings me too-small sizes and I have to ask for larger ones because I “look” straight-sized but am not always.
I know that in some ways I have the body everyone’s “supposed” to have, but no one designs clothes for this body, trust me! This body type may held up by narrow-minded people and the patriarchy in general as the naked ideal, but most of the time, we’re not naked, right? Not being able to find normally fitting clothes 99% of the time makes me feel ugly and strange. I know I should find a tailor, but I’d have to buy the ill-fitting clothes first, and that’s too depressing. I solve this problem somewhat by wearing vintage that’s kinder to extreme hourglass figures, but it’s quite difficult to find affordable 60-year-old dresses that don’t LOOK like they’re 60 years old.
My husband also has some difficulty, what with his stocky and muscular build, wide neck, and very long torso and short legs, but he’s generally more successful while shopping than I am.
I hate going into a behemoth department store and walking what seems like miles past really cute or sexy clothes to finally find the “Women’s” section tucked away, (usually behind lengerie, handbags, and shoes) and filled with overly matronly looking items which indicate, at least to me, that not only am I supposed to be deeply ashamed to be fat but I must also be in my golden years (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my style). I, personally as a fat young woman, would like to try on clothes that are actually trendy with people my age and on the same racks where all the other women shop and the same fitting rooms as well.
Wal Mart – I’m not a child, please stop putting cartoon characters on the clothes for fat women.
Target – there are more than just teenagers in the world and the rest of us need clothes that actually fit and give some measure of modesty (I tried on a pair of shorts there recently and was worried people walking around could act as my gynecologist). The majority of the women in the US are LARGER than the vast majority of clothes you have on the racks.
I guess that’s the thing that gets me the most about clothes shopping in the US. The majority of women in the US are sizes 12-14 and yet, even when I was that size, the majority of the clothes on the racks were smaller, the majority of the clothes in the entire store were smaller. Particularly business clothes and dresses. So the stores have tons and tons of clothes that aren’t being sold because they’re too small to fit anyone and yet instead of ordering more of the sizes which the average American woman wears, they restock with the smaller merchandise. This just doesn’t make sense to me.
Maybe it’s just me, but I like having separate clothing lines and areas. My body is not a scaled up version of a thinner person’s body and it wouldn’t make sense to mix the clothes together. It always frustrated me that larger sizes of clothes designed for people wearing a 4 looked terrible on me and never fit properly, even if I was wearing the right size. Now that I’m sized out of most clothing store sizes (22-24ish), the clothes I wear were at least designed for people shaped sort of like me. Most of them are designed amazingly poorly, but at least they sort of fit my body.
I can see how other people feel hurt by it though and I remember how hard it was to be an in-betweenie.
I am 5ft 2in and my clothes are in the petite section, never with the main women’s clothing section.
I am a size 0-2 (not because of any eating disorder but because I was cursed with “boyish” chest and hips)and I spent hours yesterday trying to find a Easter dress in my price range (meaning mainly limited to department store prices). I did not find ANY size 2 that was not petite!! They just said, “shop in the junior section”, but Junior dresses are very short and frilly (I am a 25 year old, 5’8″ mother of 2…little bit too old for homecoming style dresses). You can easily find my size in the more expensive designer stores (which I can’t afford), although I doubt you can find many or any plus sizes in these stores! It really isn’t fair because I am sure there are plenty of small women who just can’t afford popular designer prices and I am also sure that there are plenty of plus sized women who are willing and able to pay higher prices for designer styles. I know it is all about supply and demand…or I guess it is…but I wish some designer stores would give flattering plus sizes a trial run at least and maybe cheaper department stores could realize that not all size 2s are teens. Well there is my rant for today