Monday, 6 Sep 2004
I thought this eFitness.com article was rather interesting. As an amateur seamstress, I’ve known for years that manufacturers were flattering women with vanity sizing on clothes (like the example of calling a size 10 a size 6 in the article), but wow…they’ll have to start increasing the magnitude of their little white lies if this survey is correct. The average American woman is now a size 14, not a size 8! At 5′6″, 134 lbs, and 34-26-37 after my first challenge, I’m between sizes 6 and 8 in retail clothing range, but in true sewing pattern sizing, I’m a (gasp!) 12. This just illustrates how stupid and arbitrary women’s clothing sizes really are, how far we as a country have fallen from the fitness wagon, and how determined women are to hide their heads in the sand about this fact.
I think we need to just get over ourselves and just switch to a system like men’s clothing, where you can just buy your clothes based on your actual measurements, not some ridiculous, nonstandardized number that’s just there to make us feel less poofy than we really are. It’s time to wake up, own up to reality, and let go of our tendency to link our self-worth to whether or not we can fit into a size 4.
Maggie
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Sizing Up America
Tuesday, August 31, 2004 Posted: 12:40 EDT
By Michele Batz
Special for eFitness
We must start taking a good look at ourselves as Americans. Not because we are in a war. Not because of the election year. Because, we are putting ourselves in jeopardy with our increasing body size
A survey called Size USA and sponsored by clothing and textile companies, the Army, Navy and several universities, measured more than 10,000 people in 13 cities nationwide using a light-pulsing 3-D scanner.
Among the findings: older men have trimmer thighs than younger men. Black women are larger than other women, but they are also most likely to have the classic hourglass figure. Sixty-four percent of women are “pear-shaped,” and 30 percent are “straight” meaning they have little perceptible waist.
Nineteen percent of men are “portly” and another 19 percent have “lower front waists,” meaning, the researchers said, they had to look under the belly to find the waist. Men over 45 are most likely to have potbellies; women over 36, bigger hips (though black women older than 55 have smaller hips than those 46 to 55).
Overall, the new measurements shake up what have long been considered the average outlines of the American body. For years, an average woman was thought to be a size 8, although some circles had bumped that up to size 12 in recent years. But even the women who came in on the small size in the Size USA survey look more like what the longtime clothing industry standards would consider a size 14 — the size at which “plus size” clothing begins.
Where do you fit in? Here are some interesting stats for you: Industry standards set a size 8 at a 35 inch bust, a 27 inch waist and 37.5 inch hip. In the survey, white women ages 18 to 25 came in, on average, 38-32-41, with white women ages 36 to 45 coming in at 41-43-43. (Barbie, long the plastic bane of body image, is said to have measurements that project to about 39-18-33.)
In that same age group, black women measure, on average, 43-37-46, Hispanic women 42.5-36-44 and “other” women, which researchers said meant mostly Asian, 41-35-53.
Now for the men. Most men are larger than the traditional 40 regular, long considered the average. A 40 regular, according to standards, means a 40 inch chest, 34 inch waist and 40 inch hip, with a 15.5 inch collar. In the survey, white men ages 18 to 25 had, on average, a 41 inch chest, 35 inch waist, 41 inch hips and a 16 inch collar (that is a raw neck size, shirts are generally sized at least a half inch bigger). From the ages of 36 to 45, white men came in at 44-38-42, black men 43-37-42, Hispanic men 44-38-42 and “other” 42-37-41.
The last survey was done in 1941 by the United States Department of Agriculture who sent out researchers with tape measures to size up the population in anticipation to design military uniforms for World War II.
And during that time, they measured a population far less diverse than today’s. Americans have become overweight. The clothing industry began using “vanity sizing,” putting, say, a size 6 label on a size 10 in hopes of luring a customer.
Why the survey? Clothing companies wanted updated information to better design products to fit their customers.
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