I can see how other people feel hurt by it though and I remember how hard it was to be an in-betweenie.

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.

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.

…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.

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?

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.

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.