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About: Judgmental Clothing

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Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

This is a beautiful post about appreciating our bodies and not being ashamed of whatever shape and size they are. Idk if Angie plans to post it as one of the OBG posts she’s revisiting, but I think it’s worth a read. Beyond the question of if you feel thinner with or without clothes, there’s also the question of which way you feel better/like what you see more.
Enough from me. Click the link in the grey bar above the title.

General

14 replies

Latest reply was from cat2

Sal

Veteran

It is a great post. And I know exactly the feeling of feeling slimmer naked than clothed.

Anonymous

Love it- and yes the trouble is the clothes not the body! Even when my weight is higher, I don't feel bad about my body unless I have fit issues. But some clothes are just cut wrong for my shape, doesn't matter if I size up or down.
I appreciate my body for all it can do, it's not just a clotheshanger

rachylou

Veteran

I don’t know that I ever saw this one! I will say I prefer my shape either in clothes or out of them than with the little scrap of cloth that is a bath suit! Lol

Kate

Veteran

Great post. I don't remember it. Thanks for sharing it FI. As much as I love clothes, I prefer the look of my body without them, and feel freer that way. Probably why I've always loved skinny dipping—an acceptable way to skip and go naked (I grew up on the water).

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Kate, that is so fun, and a joy I didn’t know about until I visited a friend’s family when I was in my 20s. The feel of the water is delightful.
Rachylou, come on in, the water’s fine, and you don’t have to bother with that little scrap of textiles.
I think we’ve found the ultimate in environmentally-friendly swim”wear”.
ST “Not just a clothes hanger” is a great way to put it!

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

It's taken me a couple days to put this together, but thinking of "judgemental clothing" led me to think about people who feel judged. Clothes can't exist without having some size and shape--that's the nature of physical reality. So they "judge" a person wearing them with their extra room or by being tight. But it is possible to describe without squeezing or suggesting things should be different. The purest form of that, of course, is numbers. They say what a thing is with no suggestion of anything else, and can't be "tight" or "loose".

However, there seem to be some people who are upset at simply hearing a number. Is that because they don't only hear the number, but that with every number, there is a voice in their heads saying the number should be something different than what it is, so numbers trigger their own judgements about themselves? I'm seriously trying to figure this out.

We have discussed many, many times, that sizes are not only unrelated to anything, but that manufacturers change them at will. There is, of course, some judgement involved in making clothing sizes--that's why "vanity sizing" is a thing. But if anything, measurements that are in the form of standards that have been internationally accepted for centuries seem to upset people even more. So why is it that some people seem to feel "judged" by the simple statement of a measurement in inches or centimeters? For a while I was unable to measure waist, because it was too squishy. This is different. I don't get it.

Can anyone explain how a number, on its own, feels to some people like they are being judged or "shamed"?

rachylou

Veteran

As a tech writer, I will tell you the answer is Yes, people will hear a number AND everything that they associate with it. Remove a bush and people won’t be able to find their front door. That happened to me once. My cousin painted her house blue and I didn’t know that and I couldn't find her house!

My favourite example is a religious one… St Augustine said ‘The first sin caused Original Sin.’ It’s a phrase that has launched schisms. How many realise the ‘first sin’ is NOT ‘original sin’? Yeah, that’s my fave. You learn interesting things in tech writing school.

(Or wait… maybe that was Aquinas…)

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Sounds like Aquinas to me!

My friends moved my salt shaker 6” and laughed at me for 10 minutes before showing me where it was, lol. But still, a number is a number. I don’t how it suggests that it should be a different number—but apparently, for some people, it does.

rachylou

Veteran

I think the thing is a number isn’t a number—it’s a name.

Echo

Veteran

There is no such thing as a number in isolation; there are associations with every measurement. The media pressure, especially for a woman, to be smaller, smaller, smaller is very real. So the pressure that many people have internalized since before they even remember tells them that smaller is better. A smaller measurement means a smaller size, which means a greater cachet in society and in many social circles. And it ISN'T just in their own heads. If you have read the threads from some board members, you know the frustration they experience, not only in shopping but in almost every aspect of life and social interaction, that comes with not wearing a "straight" size (I hate this term but fail in reaching for another word).

So would anyone have a gut reaction to a random number on a billboard - a true number "on its own"? Probably not. But that same number on a scale or a measuring tape or a tag carries with it the weight of judgement, NOT just from oneself, but from almost an entire society. It is willful ignorance to ignore that all numbers, as they relate to human beings, have meaning.

Sloper

Veteran

Easy answer!

"So why is it that some people seem to feel "judged" by the simple statement of a measurement in inches or centimeters?"

Because they have been judged.

Stagiaire Fash

Veteran

Sloper, that’s brilliant.

Echo, not willful at all. Just trying to figure out how some things can be talked about without the simplest descriptor possible. How is “extra large” (or extra extra large, I don’t know the scale & they vary) less judgmental than a meter at the waist?

Echo

Veteran

It isn't. What I'm saying is that there IS no judgment free method of measuring human beings or the clothing they wear. So while we can argue about what the best method of sizing clothing is, we need to recognize that any and every method is fraught with expectation and emotion.

Because of the judgment associated with sizing, I can understand why manufacturers use biased sizing, vanity sizing, and seemingly random number systems. Clothing is as much about emotion as it is about practicality.

I don't have a solution. No one does, it seems. Ideally, all clothing would be standardized and on the same racks, but that would potentially mean having 15 or more of each item on the rack (perhaps fewer with an XXS - XXL system, but then where do the Xs end?), each one proportioned differently, with retailers knowing they likely would not sell every size. And that would still mean having only one of each size, not even accounting for inseam measurements or tall/petite. While I don't like sizing exclusion, I can partially see it from a retailer's point of view, too. They would likely be left with enormous amounts of hard-to-move inventory at the end of each season. Measurement sizing does nothing to change that conundrum, meaning that retailers would still need to limit the sizing they carried, which brings us right back to the judgment of being sized out of most stores for many people.

cat2

Veteran

We use European sizes, adopting a gauge of small frames as “normal.” If we had started with Scandinavian sizes, “normal” would look completely different.