"real" women

Since this blog tends to mainly be about knitting & food & such I tend not to say anything that causes any controversy. Last Friday I wrote this post about the current skinny pants trend at the end of the post I said "long live boot cuts & their ability to minimize hips on us real women." This morning someone left this comment...

"Anonymous said...

Whoah whoah whoah! I totally agree about the skinny pants and 80's craze (it's awful and needs to just die already!), but I can't help but feel terrible when I read your comment about 'real women' (i.e women with curves). Why is it that women need to put down other women to make themselves feel better? I thought it was a vagina that made a person a woman, not the size of her curves. Some gals just can't put on the weight (me!), that shouldn't make them any less womanly, just like women who tend to be on the curvier side aren't any less womanly."

Its had me thinking ever since. First of all I did not mean to infer that women without curves are not "real" women or womanly. (I spent the younger years of my life at 5'9 & under 110. My sister is 5'11 & until the birth of her twins was never bigger than a size 6.) Perhaps what I really should have said was "average" women. My point was not to make women who are skinny feel less like women but to make a comment about the fashion industry.

The average American woman is 5'4 140lbs and wears a size 14. 24% of women report wearing size 12 or 14 pants and another 22% report wearing a size 15 or larger. I'm am not saying this is a good or bad thing, what I am saying is that the fashion industry makes those of us who are these average sizes feel like less of women. I recently read an article in Newsweek about how despite these statistics more designers & clothing stores are bringing out sizes such as 00 and XXS.

I can really only write about my own experiences as a size 14/16 woman who would like to dress fashionably & be able to buy clothes in stores. I have spent whole days at the mall only to break down in tears because not one store had a skirt bigger than a size 8 (these are major chain stores). There are boutiques in town that have told us that their policy is to not carry anything over a size 10 (The owner of this same boutique has recently done some television commercials & she can't be any smaller than a size 18). I am not big enough for plus sizes at stores like Lane Bryant. At a 36C I have a hard time finding shirts that don't gap open at the chest. Thank god many of the major chains have started really offering my sizes online though I prefer to shop in a store & try things on. Kudos to The Gap company for offering bigger sizes in their stores including Old Navy & the fabulous new Fourth & Towne.

Let's face it the fashion industry continues to design & bring out trends that are made for skinnier, less curvey woman. On Project Runway this year one of the challenges was to design for the mothers or sisters of other designers & the designers moaned that they had no idea of how to design for "real" women which was their nice way of saying larger women.

Its really time for the fashion industry to realize that women come in a whole range of shapes & sizes & we all want to feel good about how we dress whether we are a svelte size 6 or a curvy size 16.

Now don't even get me started about shopping for pants in you are taller than 5'7.....