“I was essentially paid to perpetuate the myth that we are all, or should at least try to be, 17 and a size 2 forever.”
— Carre Otis
Before I started to write this week, the little voice in my head was saying, “Don’t go off on a rant, no one likes that.” Well, here I am a few days later, right up against my deadline, and guess what? It will be a bit of a rant — but for a good reason.
I was cleaning out a closet and discovered I own 14 pairs of blue jeans in six different sizes. I’m not a compulsive shopper; I just have crappy organizational skills, with hoarder tendencies. It’s embarrassing to think I could lose track of what I own and keep buying more, but then I started trying them on to see if any were worth keeping.
Pro tip: Three days after Thanksgiving is no time to try on clothes. The only thing I needed that day was a giant Hefty bag, but no, I had to go all “Project Runway.” I completely forgot that clothing manufacturers have no idea what women want. If they did, button-fly jeans would be illegal, a small amount of spandex would be mandatory, and size tags would never be on the outside (Yes, I’m looking at you, Levi Strauss.)
The sizes of my jeans went from about a size 10 to a size 16. Oddly, some of the larger sizes were tight on me, while some of the smaller ones were loose. It’s not a style thing either; they are all just basic five-pocket jeans.
Just for kicks, I looked at the pile of jeans my son left behind when he moved out — five years ago. Ignoring the disgrace that they were still shoved in a box in the back of a closet, the mortifying point is that men’s sizes go by waist circumference and leg length.
Nothing else.
Men’s jeans have an objective measurement of inches, not some mystery system no one can figure out. Are the companies that make jeans for women messing with us? It’s like the jeans are rolling out of the factories, with no consistency at all, and I’m pretty sure there’s a male designer in a cave somewhere, running with scissors and cackling like an evil genius, “Take that Marjorie, I got your size 8 right here… or is it a 6? Who can tell? HAHAHAHAHA.”
In men’s jeans, they don’t use terms like “skinny” or “curvy.” They literally tell you how big they are in the parts that matter — the waist and the length. What a concept. Over in the women’s department, you have racks and racks of every style of jeans, all with some sort of marketing hook to get you to choose them.
The men? They walk in, go to the 34×36 cubby shelf, grab a pair, and leave. Many women, myself included, have had to lie on a dressing-room floor, sobbing, to fit into a pair of jeans two sizes bigger than we usually wear while some perky, self-righteous sales clerk stares at us with a mix of horror and condescension.
It must be said — size matters, but just not in the way the fashion industry would have us believe. Our size is not a value judgment; it’s a number and should be standard. Size shouldn’t be complicated — it just has to be precise. I’m even willing to learn the metric system if I have to. Inches or centimeters, I don’t care. I just want to buy a pair of jeans without some PTSD-inducing fitting-room fail. I am so over the stress and angst of going into a store, being asked, “Can I help you find something?” and fighting the urge to reply, “I seriously doubt it.”
It’s time for clothing manufacturers to all lock themselves in a room and figure out a system that works. Someone will have to bring a measuring tape, and there need to be women in the room who aren’t living on rice cakes and cigarettes. Enough is enough — we are not asking for much. We simply want to know, once and for all, what size we take. Oh, and pockets, leave the pockets alone.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years, and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.