this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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I'm not in retail anymore, and I never did clothing retail, but working in theater costuming has really changed my ideas. Like, I know I am fat because at my height and weight my bmi puts me well in obese territory. But measuring people a few inches taller has put an interesting spin in my head. I know someone with the same bust size who is three inches taller and now I understand why some "large" sizes will fit both of us even though by size my cup is several sizes larger than her.
People have been telling me for years that I'm "not fat". I know they are delusional because of the numbers, but seeing other people with similar measurements does actually put it into perspective.
Kagi (the search engine) recently launched pretty cool T-shirts in their merch store, and to their first 20k paid subscribers they gave one away for free. What struck me is that the measurements were so off: I'm usually somewhere between a medium and a large, but according to the size guide I needed a size small. So I warily selected small and sure enough, when I received it I found that the height and waist are the right dimensions for me. However, it is way too small around the shoulders.
Kagi is an American company and I'm Swedish. I'm kind of fed up with people bashing Americans for their weight and that's not what I'm trying to do, but I found it interesting how the difference between countries has become ingrained into the very shape of the clothes. There apparently exists no size of an American T-shirt that will fit me because not only are Americans bigger on average, they have completely different body proportions.
There's no doubt that US sizes have become more generous. Size measurements have increased over the years by about 2 inches. A size 10 from the 50's fits like a size 8 today. A medium shirt is closer to a large from 70 years ago.