New dress sizes hit below the belt

The Virginian-Pilot © May 12, 2006

(click here for original article)

Fashion has long been about as consistent as the weather. In Virginia. In November. In a hurricane. Sizes, too.

One company's large might be another designer's extra-large or medium. It's bad enough for men, but for women, the inconsistency is so extreme that sizes are often useless, even within one company's line. That now has apparently reached the point of absurdity.

According to a recent story in The Boston Globe, as American women (along with men) have expanded, women's clothing sizes have started to shrink: Your mother's size 8 may be your 2 or even 0. Some designers, according to The Globe, have unveiled preposterous sizes to compensate: double zeros, or extra-extra smalls that can be worn by actual women with actual bodies.

The numbers and words used to describe the size of clothing have been stripped of actual meaning. A size 6 skirt might as well be called a size penguin for all the good the number does. Consider Wendy Chao, a 30-year-old graduate student at Harvard University: "I tried on a size 0 skirt and it was too big," Chao told The Globe. "To me, a size 0 is antimatter; it's something devoid of any physical reality."

When we're done hating her for being both smart and skinny, we might consider the fact that Chao may be on to something. Could the capriciousness of all this disorder our universe? Is the failure of language to accurately describe something a problem of the language or the thing?

To which we have provocative answers: No. And huh? Seriously, women's sizes have always been pretty goofy, and only got weirder after federal standards were abandoned 20-odd years ago. Still, we always figured they had some basis in reality: that somehow, a size 10 was tied to some idealized figure someplace; that sizes were perhaps just a tad more permanent and rational than the fashions built on them.

Silly us.