My wife starts work in a week which means, we have to update her wardrobe to suit. It isn't that she has nothing to wear, but after three years out of the job scene and coming from quite a different field, a few choice pieces are needed. The problem isn't the buying of them - it is the finding of them, because they no longer make clothes in her size.
Not for adults anyway.
"I'm not getting fat, I am still the same label size I always was!"
For my wife, she is getting skinnier and skinnier going by the label. While she used to be able to find something once upon a time in an XS, that is now a medium. And the weirdest thing is that they have changed the numbered sizes also, so a UK 34 was okay, now it has to be a 30. The problem is, they generally don't make a 30 and they don't bring them to Finland.
Vanity sizing is a funny thing that I wish we could get the hell away from, but it is the sign of the illusion we prefer to live in rather than face the facts that we are getting larger - but it is apparently cultural. When I was in Tokyo a decade ago I was able to fit a Medium size, however shopping in the Shibuya district was impossible, as I couldn't even get my forearms through the sleeves of their largest sizes. It was interesting to then go to Western brands and find that all of the tags had been upgraded in sizing in an effort to make people feel bigger.
I have seen the same thing in much of the men's clothes to as while I do know that I have put on a few kilos, the difference between a medium sized shirt when I weighed 70 kg and an XXL that I wear now at a massive 85 kg isn't so great. I know, because I generally don't buy a huge amount of clothes these days and I have shirts from the same brands that range in size through time from a medium to the extra, extra large I wear now. It seems that while women want their egos stroked to make them feel slimmer, men want theirs serviced to make them feel bulkier.
I would love some highly accurate standardization in the clothing industry where there is uniform sizing across the board, or at least the precise measurements always available. This is especially necessary in the online shopping arena.
I have been waiting for the service that will 3-D scan my body (perhaps they can do it as part of the "service" at airport security) so I would have a precise digital avatar that allows me to try on clothes without having to leave my home or that my wife could take around with her if she wanted to buy me something - she never does.
Google and Facebook already have a highly accurate digital avatar of us anyway and, they know our size through the purchases we make, unless we are buying in cash always. Good luck with that. They of course know the size of everyone else we are buying for too and it wouldn't surprise me if they are tracking the speed at which we are growing. Upward and outward.
While there are many factors to measure society, I think that obesity rates are a good indicator as they are able to be actively seen and when it comes to ourselves, we should be able to recognize that our bodies are changing too. It is actually quite a devious plan for consumption because through little tweaks like vanity sizing, we can put off change until the changes we need are so big they need more consumption to reverse it.
Putting on a little, noticing it and then cutting food intake slightly and exercising a touch more doesn't do a lot for sales. However, mask the changes for long enough until it is a real problem, then there is a whole range of products available to push and sell, most of which will fail. Pay on the scale up, pay on the scale down - eat and repeat.
The types and brands of clothes, cars, cosmetics, jewelry, technology, real estate, education and all of the associated goods and services for them, I wonder what percentage of the economy of the world is tied to our vanity and ego?
It is this that makes the data they collect on us so insidious and the way they use it so manipulative, because they know us better than we know ourselves and know exactly what they need to raise our fears and target them. But of course, you are too smart to be manipulated in such way right?
So says your ego.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]