Expansion

This is a small rant about clothes... so those of you who are more into naked might want to avert your eyes now...

You have been warned J

One of the things found at father's place, as we cleared out the remnants of his accumulated life, was a picture of one as a young woman looking incredibly slim in a creamy white dress. An ironic colour for someone who has as many food accidents as one does... those damn breasts catch everything. Looking at the picture it was hard to imagine one was ever that tiny... but damn the shoes were hot! Red Stuart Weitzmans that cost a small fortune even in the 80's J

At the time of high school one measured 36-26-36. It was what we used to call a size 12, though the breasts were a little bigger than the stock standard 34" of the time.  As one became an adult that dropped to 34-24-34 and so one became a size 10... about the size one was in that picture. It is a strange thing that one can't remember things like anniversaries, but can remember the size of that dress and indeed how much it cost and for that matter where it was purchased from. In fact one can even remember the comment the sales assistant made to her colleague. Go figure J

Anyway one is now back in a 10, but it is not the 10 of one's youth.  To be honest as a mature adult one doubts that a 24 inch waist is attainable or even desirable. It does however, serve to demonstrate how much our clothing, along with our meals, has been upsized. They call it vanity sizing and in the last 20 years alone it has added about two inches to our bust and about four inches to our waists and hips. It is the result of clothing manufactures realising that you can sell more clothes to women if you can get them into a smaller size.

The reality is that we are getting larger as a species. And one can't help but wonder if vanity sizing does us a service in the end. If we believe we are not getting any bigger as time passes, then we have no need to ever run a critical gaze over what we are consuming.  One of the most accurate measures of how we are doing in the weight loss battle is our clothing. The damn stuff never lies, unlike our scales L

The thing is now it does lie. Our pants get too tight and we go out and buy a new pair in the same size as before, blaming the fabric for shrinking rather than ourselves for expanding. It comes about for the simple reason that we are excellent at lying to ourselves. That little glitch that allows us to adjust to the unbearable in order to survive is conspiring to kill us one mouthful at a time L