Amy Schumer has been killing it lately with the sketches on her show, Inside Amy Schumer. In the past few weeks, she has taken on controversial issues, from women’s healthcare to gun control. Now, she’s tackling sizeism and the difficultly women face when shopping for clothes over a size eight.
The sketch begins with Schumer shopping for a shirt in a size 12, only to be silenced by a saleswoman who says, “Could you keep your voice down? You’re scaring the thinner customers.”
The saleswoman pretends to not even comprehend Schumer’s request for a larger size, but then takes Schumer to a section she says is made specifically for Schumer’s “situation.” However, instead of a section of the store, the saleswoman takes Schumer to a field with cows and…Lena Dunham? “I asked for a turtleneck and they brought me here,” Dunham says to Schumer.
Upon returning to the store, the associate ends up selling Schumer not the shirt in the size she requested, but a tarp cover. To add to the offense, she includes a mall pretzel in the shopping bag because, “We assume that’s where you’ll be going next.”
Like all of Schumer’s sketches, it is a hilarious yet harsh reality check. She truthfully addresses the reality women face when shopping outside of the typical (and unrealistic) range of sizes zero through eight that a majority of clothing stores carry. This sketch serves as a reminder that women have a diverse range of body sizes and stores should carry clothing that reflects that diversity, not just sizes for the select few who fit society’s idealistic standards of what women should look like.