Hearing someone say, “I wear a size 4 at American Eagle and a 2 at Hollister” and speak about the different sizes they wear with different brands, is a very real problem in today’s fashion world. This idea is called vanity sizing, where a brand mislabels or makes their smaller sizes larger to make people feel like they fit in a smaller size. This is pushed by the idea of body image and people wanting to fit into smaller clothing, when in reality, it does not matter what size someone is and it is just how the clothing fits each person.
Vanity sizing has become a big problem for people and clothes. If the smaller sizes have gone up, what do smaller and petite people wear when their 00 now falls off their hips because it fits like a 2? This also goes hand in hand with size inflation, where a medium in the 2000s is different from a current day medium.
The sizes have been just going up and up as fashion has evolved. Sizing in general stems from the military, where they would measure a bust size for uniforms and then assume the rest of the measurements from there. According to Time magazine, women did not get sizes or custom made clothing until around the late 40s to early 50s.
Body image is an idea that has always been around, but with the expansion of social media, the ideas of people’s own body images have become worse and worse. With social media people end up idolizing a celebrity or their favorite influencer. This is through many ways with items like coresets, shape wear or even in some extreme cases, surgical procedures. There are many different surgical procedures nowadays where people will get some fat sucked out.
Overall, vanity sizing and size inflation are things that take away clothing for skinnier and petite people and change the standard for clothing.