I don’t think fake boobs are feminine. They are unnatural, but whatever people want to do with their bodies is none of my business. However, these actresses always deny that they’ve had plastic surgery, swear they eat normally, so maybe they’re just genetic lottery winners. They are held up by the media as the standard of beauty, and there isn’t a lot of tolerance for other body types. This is absurd, esp. when the body in question has had surgery on it to make it look like that. Do you see how this becomes an unhealthy thing for women?
What’s the difference between “normal” and “the norm,” first of all? Second, there is a difference between being thin and having bones sticking out. A triathlete like your ex-wife would likely have muscle over those bones, no? Jessica Simpson didn’t look muscular or worked out to me. I can tell the difference.
Normal is whatever it is for each person. Size 8 is normal for me. I can see my ribs but they don’t jut out. I can feel my hip bones but they don’t look like they could slice paper. You have to take into account height, build, bone structure, natural fat distribution, etc. There is no way to say “women of this size are normal but these aren’t.”
My point, which you keep missing, is that big boobs and flat stomachs don’t go together except on teenagers and women with plastic surgeons. There are exceptions to this as with everything, but in general, this seems to be true. When the cultural paragon of beauty is not attainable by normal means for most people, then it’s not normal or healthy.
Minor nitpick, but no. Petite sizes are for short women, and relaxed fit is the way the pants or whatever hang, the waist size and length remain standard. Clothing sizes aren’t, IME, changing. And I conduct a lot of personal research on the subject of shopping.
I’m “guilty” of the sin the OP rants about, in a way. I had a good reason to do so though. **Mr. Clawbane ** is quite slender. In fact at one point he was only 148 pounds, at six feet four inches tall. He was not at a healthy weight for him. (He lost that weight because he’d been busy helping the neighbors roof their garage in the hot summer heat, and had not appetite from being in the heat all day. Plus his family has a tendency to stay thin, and not put on weight easily.) Even the doctor agreed that he needed to gain some weight. So, I cooked very tasty meals that had a good deal of calories, with plenty of vegetables. I ate more vegetables, and less of the main course, he took second helpings, and put on weight. He’s up to 160 pounds, and is much more healthy now.
Amen! I was running easily 6-8 miles 3-4 times a week and I was a size 14. I ran a half-marathon while I was what some people would consider fat (25 lbs over ideal weight for my height).
You know, if I’d chosen to do nothing about my weight problem, size 40" waist might have been “normal” for me right now. As things stand, I’m at my current normal of 31".
It’s “normal” for a sedentary person to not be able to do a single chinup.
You keep using that word Rubystreak. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
(Lets leave the implant stuff for another discussion. Okay?)
They wear children’s or young adult clothes. Seriously.
I buy boy’s t-shirts because “normal” sized ones for women are always too long on me due to being short AND short-waisted; the babydoll t-shirts actually fit close to normally. I somtimes also wear men’s jeans or baggies because the way I like them to fit and hang don’t exist in adult women’s fashions anymore, though the low-rider jean fashion trend was great for me because those pants came up to my hips. The whole fashion industry is geared for women who look nothing remotely like me. I’m 5’0", 125ish, 34DD-25-34, usually size 8 but sometimes as small as 6 or as big as 12. and I feel like I’m abnormal, not because of how I look but b/c of how hard it is to find clothes that fit right. When I find them, I buy the hell out of them.
Who are these women for whom all these clothes have been designed? I know no one IRL who looks like them, and I am looking, believe me.
The only thing normal about me fashion-wise is my shoe size, 7.5. God, I just recognized the root of my shoe obsession.
Actually, “petites” are for short women. I’m neither thin or fat, but I’m only 5’3 so I shop in petites. And they go all the way up the scale-for very thin petite women and large women as well.
I’m a size 12, for the most part, sometimes a 10, sometimes a 14, depending on the garment and the manufactorer. And I’m not at all fat. Out of shape, maybe, but not fat.
Although there IS definitely “vanity sizing” out there.
I think I’m about a “B” cup, but I usually wear sports bras because they’re much more comfortable than those nylon and wire contraptions, and they’re not usually sold by cup size. I don’t have big boobs, but I’m not flat-chested. I even have a bit of a pot belly, if you can believe it.
As a clueless dude, maybe one of you ladies could give me a quick primer on how these sizes work? Maybe with some examples of well known women for a particular size?
I googled this, but womens clothing sizes seem to have no standardization at all, depending on who makes the clothes. I mean most of us guys do the S,M,L etc for shirts and 32-32 or whatever for pants.
I can’t help out on sizing, sorry - they’re as confusing to women as they are to men.
Just chiming in as someone who’s pissed about the use of “size 12” as shorthand for “fat chick.” I am 5’9", 150 lbs; this is well within normal range for a woman of my height and frame size. When I dropped down to around 140 lbs or a little less, friends were honestly concerned about my health. (I was deeply stressed and not eating right.) I also have a medium to large frame. No, I’m not bullshitting about “I’m just big-boned!”; you can poke on the sides of my hips and feel the bone right under the skin and muscle. I have a 32" inseam and in most pant/dress sizes, wear a 12. I’m no marathon runner, but I exercised in college and bicycled everywhere, and I’m at the same weight now that I was then. Sure, I could use some toning, but if anything I’d only gain weight due to muscle mass addition, and I don’t consider that a bad thing at all.
Oh, and the last starlet I said “oh man, she needs to eat something” about? Lindsey Lohan. Recently she admitted drug abuse and bulimia. The last person I knew? My sister, who later that day (I didn’t say it to her or around anyone who told her) confessed to me that she was going through tests to determine what her neurological disorder was; she was having problems with the nerves in her periphery, and the doctors found a spot on her brain of unknown origin. She wasn’t eating well due to stress. So we can actually be right about someone not being healthy.
It has absolutely no standardization. It drives me crazy. I’m 5’4" and 140 lbs (put on a few this past year). Depending on what brand the clothing is, I range from a size 6 to a size 12. Seriously. It’s ridiculous.
If that is your point, then you are just as wrong as the person who says size such-and-such is normal. Big boobs and flat stomachs don’t go together? That’s it?
So what you mean is that big boobs only go with big ol’ fat belly? C’mon, that’s just stupid.
Then there’s pattern sizing. I’m a 12 petite, (I’ve got hips and boobs, what can I do?), but in patterns I’m something like a 20, because patterns run big.
Tell me about it. I also hate those campaigns where they say “Real women have curves” and other bullshit like that. If I hear one more prissy bitch say “no woman should ever be a size 0” then I will punch her in the face myself.
It took a lot of work to get size 1. And I don’t mean down, but up. I’ve been underweight for my height most of my life despite eating more than men twice my weight. It’s genetic, my whole family is thin. I’m 5’3 and I just managed to break 100 pounds this year. Even when I was smaller than a size zero, I had 32Bs. I went on a progesterone based birth control which filled out my hips and gave me a bit of a tummy. I was glad, not because I was unhappy with my body or unhealthy, but because I could finally fit into the smalls of the Juniors section. It’s depressing when you are 22 and wear mediums from the kids section.
My sister is the same way, only more blessed in the chest department. We both wear size 0-1 jeans yet she has a 34C despite being 19. Both of us have had school nurses accuse us of anorexica despite the fact that we could outeat any of our classmates and did so constantly. Both my sister and I are huge geeks who could give a damn about what the media says is fashionable or beautiful. She started going to the gym earlier this month, not to lose weight or to look better, but because that’s what her dormmates decided to do for fun once a week.
I think she’s talking about girls who are obviously anorexic with huge DD breasts sticking out. It’s possible, but not common, from what I gather.
kimera, you sound like my mom. My sister is tall and naturally thin and has a nice, slim figure. My mom is chronically underweight, and it doesn’t help that she has a very sensitive stomach. She’s extremely self-conscious about wearing anything open necked because her collar bone sticks out.
But what is “obviously anorexic”? I hear that word being tossed around about people who are thin with big boobs, i.e. Jessica Simpson. Who is thin, but again, I wouldn’t say unhealthily so. Then you’ve got people like Nicole Ritchie or Lindsay Lohan a few months ago - stick thin, with boobs that disappeared when they got unhealthily thin. Does anorexic now mean something new?
And sorry to drag something over from the other thread, but:
Why on earth would you take her word for it? I have to say, she sounds like a moron: if you’ve ever seen pictures of people who are actually starving, in the true sense of the word, their stomachs are far from flat.
And some real women have curves. Some real women are thin, boobless, hipless, and naturally so. I hate how high school teachers spend all this time telling teenage girls to ignore the messages in the media and that “thin isn’t in” and that people like Jessica frickin’ Simpson are unhealthy and gross. Fuck that. If we can teach young girls and guys that healthy is something to strive for - whether it’s healthy like JS or healthy like Laila Ali - instead of this message of “talk trash about anyone famous and better looking than you”, I think we’d be far better off.
I would like to second the notion that size 12 does not equal fat. I have a very tall friend who looked Mary-Kate Olson sick in a size 10 (she actually was sick).
I also happen to think 0, as a size label, should not exist. Label the smallest thing you make 1 and go up from there. In fact, if they went 1, 2, 3, 4, etc instead of 0, 2, 4, 6 etc, you wouldn’t run out of sizes and have people bitching because they went up a size overnight. Peeve of mine.
I believe historically, sizes are changing. We have some of my grandmother’s WWII era dresses. She was a size 10 most of her life. When I was in highschool, I decided to try them on. Being an 8/10 myself, I thought having some vintage dresses would be cool. well, I couldn’t even zip the damn things. I was horrified. But then I really took a look at pictures of young grandma, and she did look smaller than me.
Just recently, my mother lost about 60lbs (yay for her-- Dad had a stroke so they both decided to get healthy). She’s wearing a size 6 now, and apparently decided to try on some of her mom’s dresses. They fit great. This prompted Mom to mention to me that she had been thinking it was odd that when she was in college, she weighed even less than she does currently, and yet was a larger size.
We are getting bigger. Not just fatter, but taller. I have 4 inches on my mom, and six on grandma. How many of us are taller than our parents? That’s got to account for some of the size changes.
