Okay, now that I have set myself up for an extended trip to the proverbial dog house, I might as well speak my mind. Here it is. The oddities in female clothing nearly all point to one thing: Female vanity. There I said it.
If you have read my previous post (scroll down) about male sizes, you remember that we ended by discussing feet and shoe sizes, so that is a good place to begin the discussion of the feminine gender, their vanity and their attire. Let’s pick up where we left off: Shoes.
Imagine a man and a woman who have the exact same size foot and they can wear each other’s shoes. If you peak inside his shoe and notice it is a size 9, her size is 7 ½. Now how do you explain that with anything other than female vanity?
Note: Fun foot facts: 1) 90% of women wear the wrong size shoe 2) The largest size man’s shoe has been a size 37. 3) High heels make your feet look smaller. (Perhaps the previous fellow should have tried that)
Now let’s examine dress sizes. When I decided to write this article, I asked five women what they thought the ideal measurements for women are. When I averaged them out, then rounded off to the nearest whole number, the ladies told me the ideal female measurements are 35-23-35. My sister, Carol, said the ideal waist size is a 19, so she brought the average down, but she was 67 years old at the time, and that certainly qualified her to have her own opinion.
Then I asked several guys the same question. They thought the ideal size for women’s breasts was somewhere around a 46. As long as we were willing to discuss boobs like that they were too giddy to waste time discussing the waist or hips. But, I must stay on topic.
If you will allow me to examine the ideal female body, as my lady friends identified it, I would argue that her dress size ought to reflect one of the three primary measurements: In this case 35, 23, 35. What could be any easier than that? If you go by the breasts or hips, her dress would be a size 35; or if you went by the waist size, she would wear a size 23; or if we added them all up, she would wear a size 93. Even though that would make perfect sense, I cannot imagine any woman, especially one with “an ideal body” who would want to don a dress, sized 93!!!
Regardless of all of the careful measurements, none of that is good enough to identify dress sizes. For reasons only known to secret intellectuals of generations gone by, somebody in the faded pages of history decided that the dress that fits the average size woman is a 10, not a 93, as logic would suggest.
Once again this attracts the indisputable accusation of female vanity. In fact according to the Seattle Times women are even willing to pay more for clothes that are inaccurately labeled. They call it “Vanity sizing”.
The average sized woman wears a dress sized 10, but the average size man wears a suit, size 40. WE'RE NOT FOUR TIMES AS BIG! If the average sized man was really four times as big as the average sized woman, then when they go out on a date they would look a lot like the charming couple in this picture.
That might work out fine for a dinner date, but it would probably mean couples would never go bowling or dancing.
Do you still need more proof? The smallest size man's suit, before he has to shop in the boys department, is usually a size 32; but, the smallest size pants, before a smallish woman shops in the girls department, is size 0….. ZERO? ZERO? How the heck can anybody be a size zero? Zero equals nothing! She is certainly a heck of a lot more than that!
If women are going to refer to themselves by the sizes as indicated, why does anybody even bother identifying their measurements in the first place? I guess it is so the giddy guys will have a civilized way to refer to their upper body parts. I suppose it is possible that some of the more “interesting” ladies don’t like it when college guys say magumbos, sweater stretchers, milk pillows, mama’s melons, 4 hands-full, fun bags, big Berthas, B1 & B2, bumpers, coconuts, Thelma and Louise, the girls, mosquito bites, Lavern and Shirley, Winnebagos, Volvos or any one of a hundred other nick-names.
That seems unfair to me. If women want to distort the truth, why should the fellows be held to high standards?
Next up! The undies!
What say you?
be sure to keep up with my blog about family finances.
4 comments:
So I had a moment of either perspiration or inspiration while reading this little ditty. I have tapped into my inner feminine mystique and realized that the reason the average size females dress is labeled 10 is because that is perfect, if you look at it on a scale, say 1 to 10, than being a dress size ten must be the most ideal, and therefore favorable. Following that logic then, women designers, perhaps because they had more or less education at the time of decision making, decided that using a scale of one to 10 to define the “perfect” dress size was much easier than actually taking a measurement. This also allowed them to shop even faster by just glancing at a rack and going, “oh, that dress is a ten!” Perhaps that is also where we get the expression in the English language of “you look like a ten!”
The first time I heard any serious mention of a woman as a "10" was in 1979 when Bo Derek played in a movie of that name. That was long after dress sizes were established.
This is kind of off subject but interesting. The Urban Dictionary defines 'a perfect 10' as: "A really skinny guy standing next to his fat girlfriend, thereby making them look like the number 10." I guess that would really make the girl a size 0.
I have been known to buy pants that I didn't really need or particularly like because the size sewn into the waist was smaller than one I usually wear. There is a huge discrepancy in women's sizes...we cannot shop off the rack, everything must be tried on. Case in point, I have sizes ranging from 4 to 8 in my current wardrobe and can wear all of them just fine. And I have noticed actually that the higher end clothes actually tend to be more true to size, not sized smaller to appeal to the buyer.
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