There’s no denying that in American culture a woman’s physical size exerts a powerful influence on the way she is viewed and judged by others. As a result, for many women, their actual weight and any manifestations of it—namely clothing sizes—can become integral parts of their identity. Now, living as we are in an era of the size zero and a constant bombardment of images of ever-shrinking celebrity women, there is more concern than ever that women’s self-images are being pushed in an extremely unhealthy direction by a combination of forces.

A recent Newsweek article revealed that designer Nicole Miller plans to begin offering a size even smaller than those we’ve become accustomed to: “something tentatively called the ‘subzero’ for women with 23.5-inch waists and 35-inch hips.” Within the same article, readers’ attention was drawn to the increasingly popular fashion industry phenomenon of “vanity sizing,” which entails enlarging the size of the actual clothing, while allowing the number on the tag to remain unchanged. The result, which the article describes as “self-delusion on a mass scale,” leads to a bevy of women running around in size six clothes and feeling great about it, when in reality they might be closer to a size ten or twelve.

These developments have the potential to exacerbate a number of already disturbing trends in the culture of American women. The advent of the new size “subzero” runs the risk of tempting women to aspire toward even lower, and by extension often much unhealthier weights for themselves, as the article notes. Lately, it is not unusual to hear about women aspiring to lose enough weight to fit a size two, a size much smaller than the previously common target size of six. Obviously this is not true for women of all cultures, as different subsets of American society often impose different standards of what is attractive. However, for those who are easily swayed by mainstream advertising and the appearances of many celebrity women, the specter of an increase in the prevalence of eating disorders looms large. The presence of a yet smaller size underneath where women already are can add a dangerous pressure to take weight loss to the extreme, and take their sizes into the negative numbers.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the potential problems caused by vanity sizing, problems given far less attention in the Newsweek article. Vanity sizing skews away from encouraging women to be too small, and instead might allow them to become complacent in weight ranges that are too high to be healthy. Rather than attacking the root of the problems for women who feel overweight, and encouraging them to adopt more healthy lifestyles to take more control of their self-image, vanity sizing panders to their insecurities. For women who are truly overweight, allowing them to believe that they’re smaller than they actually are might seem like a benevolent, “feel-good” practice on the part of clothing companies. Instead, it places undue emphasis on the number on the clothing tag rather than the vitality and self-esteem of the woman wearing the clothes.

Ultimately, clothing companies need to decide exactly what they are trying to accomplish. In one instance, their dishonest and inconsistent sizing standards seem targeted towards allowing larger-sized women to feel better about their bodies. However, the continual addition of ever smaller sizes and the use of tiny models for advertising send the unintended message that it is perfectly acceptable, and perhaps desirable, for women to aspire to rail-thin figures. If the fashion industry really has any concern for its consumers, rather than simultaneously lying to us and advancing conformity to precarious celebrity trends, it should focus on encouraging American women to find a healthy, happy medium.

A good way to start would be by doing away with the meaningless (sub)-zero to mid-twenties numbers that identify women’s clothing sizes but do not correspond to any actual part of a woman’s body. Obviously, wearing a size two does not mean that one’s waist is two inches in circumference. Instead, clothing companies should make the switch to the practices of men’s sizes—base the numbers on waist and height measurements. That way, women will have a consistent, concrete basis through which to understand their sizes. Additionally, before getting any bright ideas about aspiring to a size “subzero,” confronted with meaningful numbers, women may stop and realize that hey, maybe a 23½-inch waist isn’t the best goal for us to set.

In the meantime, women should focus on finding ways to make size and weight less integral parts of our identities. There’s much more to us than the numbers on our clothing tags, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll move toward a culture full of women with healthy, realistic body images that don’t define us.



Ashton R. Lattimore ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is an English concentrator in Dunster House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.