Whilst wandering around the shops of Florence this summer I stumbled upon a shop called Brandy Melville. With cropped t-shirts, lacy vests, puffer style jackets and patterned trousers in the window I just had to have a look inside. What I quickly realised however was that it was a one size only shop. This realisation was quickly followed by thoughts of am I small enough to fit into any of these trousers, am I somehow inadequate if I don’t and what size is one size anyway?
There are loads of Buzzfeed and As/Is videos which explore the phenomenon of one size fits all. They use a range of female body types who then try on clothing branded as one size fits all to explore whether this one size actually exists. In a Buzzfeed video from 2015 one of the participants exclaims ‘Oh Hell yeah, like I can fit in this’ before musing ‘it’s kinda sad because… They’re like making me feel bad if I don’t fit in something that’s obviously like way too small for 90% of the human race.’ This term one size fits all is problematic to say the least as it seems to set a goal for your bodies size that you feel you have to reach. Setting a goal for women’s bodies to be one size is unrealistic as height, chest, waist, hips, length of torso and legs among so many other factors are all variants which make not only different sized women but different shaped women. Confining women to one size and one size fits all has negative implications on self-esteem and body confidence.
In 2016 the Women’s Equality Party ran the campaign #NoSizeFitsAll during London Fashion Week aiming to change the fashion industry’s view of body image and sizing and encouraging fashion brands to show not only size 6 clothing but also the same garments in sizes 12 or above.
Yet two years on in the summer of 2018 H&M were involved in a sizing scandal after customers consistently complained their sizing was too small. One of these complaints included an open letter from Rebecca Parker on Facebook. This led to H&M announcing a change in their sizing policy however when Rebecca Parker visited H&M again this October she found no improvement.
This obsession with the sizing of women’s clothing could be a product of the corporate tactic of vanity sizing. Vanity sizing is a term used for the practice of reducing the sizes of clothes (e.g. a size 12 to a 10) in order for women to feel like they are one or two sizes smaller and so encourages spending. These kinds of tactics are used by the clothing companies as a marketing tool but it has extremely adverse effects on the way women see their bodies. Instead of aiming to be a smaller size we should embrace the size we are and so should others.
In a society where we should be striving for positive body image and the acceptance and embrace of body diversity these terms of one size fits all and the general obsession with sizing are limiting and damaging to our mental health. To say there is only one size implies that only this size is suitable or to imply one size fits all suggests that everyone should fit this size and if they do not they are out of the norm or inadequate. With approximately 1.25 million people in the UK suffering from an eating disorder I feel instead of confining our definition of size and shape to one we should instead be embracing the diverse shapes and sizes of all in order to combat this.
#NoSizeFitsAll
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