Every once in awhile, I read in some old ad or some old book a reference to women’s dress sizes. Now, I understand that all of us humans have been getting bigger as time goes on. How come, then, I’ll read about the heroine of a 1945 novel being a size 12? Have they been changing the sizes downward to make us modern women feel skinny? Or were they not as little back then as we’ve been led to believe?
They’ve been changing the sizes downward to make us feel skinny.
Check this out:
I read somewhere (don’t remember where now) that some time ago, female models were actually the size of a “normal” female. However, people would spend a lot of time talking about the women themselves, not the clothes they were wearing. As a result, fashion designers started using women who were real tall and skinny, hoping that the unattractive nature of the women would force people to notice the clothes. Instead, you get what we have today: essentially attractive women in an anorexic state wearing pretty ugly clothes. It is a sad state of affairs, especially because now woman want to look this way, when they are so much more attractive when they are happy and healthy 
So maybe woman aren’t so much smaller than they used to be, but skinnier - The fact that a heroin of a novel was a size 12 tells us than men back then knew what was going on, way more so than we do today. Who the heck wants to bed down with a bag of bones? Not me.
More pasta, honey?
Check this out:
I read somewhere (don’t remember where now) that some time ago, female models were actually the size of a “normal” female. However, people would spend a lot of time talking about the women themselves, not the clothes they were wearing. As a result, fashion designers started using women who were real tall and skinny, hoping that the unattractive nature of the women would force people to notice the clothes. Instead, you get what we have today: essentially attractive women in an anorexic state wearing pretty ugly clothes. It is a sad state of affairs, especially because now woman want to look this way, when they are so much more attractive when they are happy and healthy
So maybe woman aren’t so much smaller than they used to be, but skinnier. Also, you are talking about a character in a novel, not the average size of a woman. I would guess the physical proportions of women haven’t changed that much in a long time.
The fact that a heroin of a novel was a size 12 tells us than men back then knew what was going on, way more so than we do today. Who the heck wants to bed down with a bag of bones? Not me.
More pasta, honey?
I don’t have a cite, but I read a newspaper article on the changing definitions of womens’ clothing sizes. Basically: Yes, sizes are changing to reflect the fact that people are getting fatter in the US. Twenty years ago, I was a size9/10; sometimes a 12. Now I am a size 6-8 (small). My weight has not deviated one whit from when I was 14, and I’m now 43.
IIRC, the article focussed on catalog clothing companies. J. Crew, appealing to a somewhat younger demographic, still tend to size clothing a bit smaller. LL Bean, Land’s End & Victoria’s Secret appeal to an older buying population, so their sizes are more generous. It’s all marketing!
Snopes had a great article about how Marilyn Monroe supposedly would be considered “too fat” to be a sex symbol today!
The more expensive the brand of women’s clothing, the smaller your size will be. A size 3 $4000 designer dress would be equivelant of a size 6 bought at K-Mart.
The average American woman today is heavier than the average American woman was 50 years ago. But the “ideal” woman today, at least if your ideal is portrayed by elite models, actresses and beauty contest winners, is thinner now.
Clothing sizes are truly hopeless as a way to determine a person’s size. In addition to what’s been said about variations over time and between brands, remember that clothing sizes can’t account for differences in height and shape. If you have two women of the same height and with the same waist size, but the first has an hourglass figure (large bust, wide hips) and the other has a boyish figure (small bust, narrow hips), the first will obviously wear a larger size, particularly in fitted clothing. Similarly, a tall woman will generally wear a larger size than a short woman of roughly the same build, simply because her shoulders, chest and hips will be proportionately wider.
To continue in the perceived ideal vs. reality vein, I recently found these tidbits in a book I’m reading on mother/daughter relationships:
The average American woman weighs 144 pounds and wears between a size 12 and size 14.
and
Twenty years ago, a model generally weighed 8 percent less than the average woman; today she weighs 23 percent less.
We’re probably not, on average, that different than our peers 50 years ago. We just think we’re supposed to be smaller.
Carina42, you make an interesting point. I recently slimmed down to the point where I could get into a size 8, the size I wore throughout high school and up until I was about 35 years old. My weight back in those days hovered around 125. I have no access to scales right now, so my immediate thought was that I had slimmed back down to 125 again. Then I weighed myself: WRONG. I weighed 140, yet I was wearing a size 8!
I vote with Amarinth. I think they are changing the size standards so that we think we’re thin, to counteract the fact that we’re actually bigger than the average woman 50 years ago.
I’ve been interested in the past for years and have looked at many old photographs, went to museums where they had displays of rooms set up with mannequins and actual period furniture.
People, on the average, were shorter than now, but the women were rather stocky on the average. They looked very plain also, often almost mannish, in the face. I, for one, prefer the women of today, and I don’t mean the skinny, bony model-like women. I mean the average, slender but not bony woman. You don’t find as many of today’s women looking like they could open beer bottles with their teeth, clean out a bar single handedly, or shoe a horse.
I found the average woman of the 1800s, early 1900s to be pretty much homely and often very chunky.
With the texture of the heavy clothing both men and women wore in layers, I think they had to be pretty tough with no air conditioning, especially before the invention of the electric fan. Back then, men usually chose strong women, those who could pop out kids, slop the hogs, clean the house without benefit of any electrical appliance, wash cloths by hand, hang them up, bring them in, iron them with a flat iron heated on the wood burning stove, sew things by hand, make meals from scratch, bake bread, churn butter, keep milk in a ‘cool well,’ tend the garden, care for the kids, wash the dishes, boil water for the dishes, carry in water, sluice down the laundry room floors, fuel the laundry room boiler, and much, much more.
I figure they had to be heavy from all of the work they did. Ever watch the ‘1900 house’ series? That’s a pretty good representation. It was harder in the 1800s.
I still prefer today’s women and bless the inventor of all of the beauty products they use and the change in society where they no longer like to look like truck drivers, or bouncers.
I’m sure retail clothing sizes have been moved down over the last 40 years. And Badtz Maru is definitely correct about needing a larger size in cheaper clothing. Like shopping at Wal-mart doesn’t make me depressed enough already.
Interestingly, dressmaking sizes from patterns that you buy to sew your own clothes from seem to have remained stable. To figure out what size you need to sew, you measure your hips, bust, and waist, then compare these to a little chart on the pattern envelope. I wear a 4 or 6 retail, but on the few occasions I’ve sewn for myself I need to make a 10 or 12.