Friday, February 11, 2005
 

TGIF?

High point of Fridays here in Armpitville? What Not to Wear. Actually, that's usually my highlight, anyway.

They sent this week's fashion unfortunate to a Marina Rinaldi store, which is plus-size. The woman looked pretty average to me, so I stroll over to google and, after a short search, find that plus-size apparently starts at US 14. Isn't the average size for an American woman 12 or 14? I head over to Lane Bryant, the only other plus-size chain I can think of, and find that there too, 14 is plus size. Terminology is a strange thing. Of course, a friend of my mother's said that when she was a child, she shopped in the "Husky Girls" section of the department store, so maybe we should count this as progress?

The average height of an American woman is 5 feet, three and a half inches-- exactly my height. So explain to me why all pants are so long that I either have to hem them, roll them up (jeans only, and only in the house; as much as I'd love the $5000, I'm not trying to get on What Not to Wear), or wear my four-inch heels so that the pants don't drag the ground.

I did some googling for average sizes of US women, and I ran up on some statistics that I strongly doubt. One was that runway models are size 6; I find that very hard to believe. I think that catalogue models (who weigh more than runway models) may be a six, but I know for a fact that Natalia Vodianova is a 4 (designer size, too) and Liya Kebede is a 2, to name two current top models.

Another thing I encountered was a statement that store mannequins are size six. I routinely pull the waistbands down on store mannequins (I'm sure the sales associates love me) to see what size pants are on them, and it's usually 0 or 2. Often, the pants are pinned at the waist in the back to fit the mannequin's tiny waist. Shirts tend to be XS, and they're almost always pinned (which, granted, may have something to do with giving the shirts shape on a nonhuman body).

None of this rant is original. But it's still a slap in the face of reality. And, dangit, I want some pants that don't get caught in the heels of my shoes.

But they can have my four-inch heels when they pry them off my cold, dead, blistered feet.

Reading: finished Smashed, which was not particularly good. There probably does need to be an account of the problem of female binge drinking, but this book doesn't do the topic justice. Have switched tracks and am now read The Ivy Chronicles, which is lightweight but funny. It's been awhile since I could just pick up a book and read it just because it appealed to me. A looooong time.
Listening: nuthin'
Current Obsession: stupid body still won't cooperate
Alice: is sleeping angelically next to me, which makes me wonder what she's been up to.

Elvisette philosophized at 11:18 PM