Every woman understands the frustration of female clothing sizing. It’s a complaint made time and time again but not one that’s ever been rectified. Sorting through clothing brands and the assortment of letters and numbers somehow meant to represent your size, you might as well be digging around for the Q in your alphabet soup.
One brand’s medium is another brand’s small and sometimes no matter what size you buy, none of it fits correctly anyway. It’s an emotionally frustrating experience, trying on things over and over to no avail, nothing draping your hips quite as well as it does the model, not even knowing if you should size up or down but knowing something is off. Despite how accustomed we are to it, it shouldn’t take so much effort just to find clothing.
Most people assume sizing inconsistency is random or simply the result of poor standardization, but the history behind women’s sizing is actually much deeper.
Modern sizing systems were built around limited body data and those “average” measurements historically centered white women.
Clothing was originally custom-made and tailored but because of mass production, standardized sizing quickly became a necessity. Department stores began advertising ready-to-wear fashion and the industry grew rapidly in the early 1900s. Because of growing demand, companies needed a “standard female body” so they could manufacture clothing efficiently.
This led to the work of Ruth O’Brien, a Works Progress Administration statistician who led a 1930s federal sizing study. Thousands of women were measured across the U.S., including women of color and people of all ethnic backgrounds.
However, when it came time to analyze and apply the data, many of those women were excluded. The data largely centered white Anglo-American women while excluding Black women, Jewish women, immigrant women and many Eastern and Southern European ethnic groups.
Although the goal was “normalizing” the female body for industry production, what they achieved was far from it.
This era was heavily influenced by the eugenics movement and the frustration with clothing sizes today is just proof of how we are still being affected by discrimination efforts of the past.
Scientists were obsessed with organizing “ideal” bodies and as a result white European body proportions were treated as the default. Bodies outside of those standards were often viewed as “abnormal” and fashion sizing reflected those biases.
Many of these issues still exist today. Sizing still feels inconsistent and brands still use fit models based on narrow body standards. Women of different races, ethnicities, body compositions, and heights all struggle to find consistent fits.
Fashion is a significant part of many women’s lives. It’s a bonding experience, a major form of expression, and a field we have dominated since the beginning. Clothing should fit you, not the other way around so as women, women need to stop internalizing sizing emotionally when the system itself was built around limited standards. In reality, sizes are arbitrary and the older you get, the more clothes you try on, and the more you return, the more you begin to realize it.
The fashion industry profits from inconsistency and insecurity. How many pieces of clothing have you ordered online just to find out it doesn’t fit even though you know you wear this size in almost every other brand, only for the clothes to sit in the back of your closet until the next cleanout. And I bet maybe you even ordered another in a different size or from a different brand after that.
It’s time for women to stop blaming themselves and start blaming the system because talking about it and pushing brands to improve their sizing does work. More brands today are expanding their sizing ranges and we’re having more conversations around inclusivity. With sizing still being inconsistent, consumers should keep demanding better representation.
Clothing sizes were never objective truths. They were constructed systems based on limited and biased data. So just a reminder, your body and self-worth isn’t defined by a number on a tag, the system is flawed, not you.