Having been given a gift card for my birthday for new clothes, I set out today to The Gap. Longtime readers will recall that I don't shop. I hate to do it. I avoid stores if at all possible. So I hadn't encountered this particular phenomenon.
Grabbed some pants in size 8 Long and 10 Long to see what would work. These seem like more or less the size I should wear. But the 10 drowns me. And then the 8 does too. And I ask the attendant, with real confusion, if they're mislabeled. And she says that they're certainly not, and retrieves for me a 6 Long. They fit, a bit loosely but fine. Now, I'm athletic, but I'm not tiny like that, and I'm tall besides, and I have not been a SIZE SIX since GRADE SIX. Clearly, The Gap wants me to feel very self-satisfied and reassured in my artificially tiny clothes.
Subtle, fair, and wise is Rose
13 hours ago
4 comments:
This is so widespread. I have lots of size 10 clothes that go back for years, because I never throw stuff out, and I don't buy new stuff very often. After my first son was born, I needed a few pairs of pants to wear to teach for few months to make the transition from maternity cloths back to my regular pants. So I went to try on a 12 or 14. Both were too big. I tried on a 10, and it fit. I thought, but none of my size 10s at home fit. But I both the pants. When I got home, I put them on the bed with a pair of my old size 10s, and the new purportedly size 10 pants were a good inch and a half larger in the waist. Sheesh!
Rats! I guess that explains why my Levis have stayed the same size for the last 20 years. And all this time I thought it was those blasted sittups . . . .
Vanity sizing aside, you ARE a very slender, athletic person. I would have had you down as a size six (or smaller) from 100 yards away.
I just realized that it's been so long since I spent time in the store that I was still calling it by the name it went by when the radio jingle sang, "Fall...in...to...The...Gap." But now they've done away with the definite article, haven't they? They now embody pure lacuna: all the lack in our lives, presumably.
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