Women Increase by one dress size per decade?

[llewtrah]

I can't remember where I heard or read it, but after reaching our adult build (I guess at age 18-20) women supposedly gain one dress size for each decade of life.

I was UK size 12 when I was 20. By 30 I was size 14. At 40 I was size 16 (though I'd bloated much larger before getting my diet and weight under control). My sisters follow the same trend, but mum was size 14 between age 30 - 60 so if there is any truth in it, it has to be related to the modern lifestyle! I have no intention of being a UK size-24 80-year old!

Has anyone else come across this "fact" about growth? Presumably the size 0 supermodels would have to gain several decades' worth of weight overnight!

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

Presumably the size 0 supermodels would have to gain several decades' worth of weight overnight!

Nitpick: size 0 is an American dress size.

[Mr. Furious]

Well, my wife has remained the same size (size 0) since high school. There was the baby weight after each of the two kids, but she got back down to her original size pretty quickly. She's not 40 yet, so there's time to grow, I suppose.

Her sister is an interesting case. She was around a size 10, but went down to a size 4 after her first child. Now, a year and a half after her second child (and about 4 years after the first), she's a 0 or 2, depending on the store.

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

Nitpick: size 0 is an American dress size.

Yeah, but you don't see them being called "size 4 models" do you? Even on the continet they're known as size zeroes. I guess it emphasises their skinniness - "sero size, zero shape and zero appeal".

[Mr. Furious]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

Even on the continet they're known as size zeroes. I guess it emphasises their skinniness - "sero size, zero shape and zero appeal".

Please tell me that you're talking exclusively about the genuinely emaciated models and not painting all those who wear size 0 clothing with such a sickeningly broad brush.

[wanderwoman]

Finally, something in which I am above average!

(Oh wait, it's not a good thing, is it?)

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

Yeah, but you don't see them being called "size 4 models" do you? Even on the continet they're known as size zeroes. I guess it emphasises their skinniness - "sero size, zero shape and zero appeal".

On the front of the Daily Mail today, it mentioned a woman's "disturbing quest" to slim from size 12 to size 0. I assume they meant UK size 12 and US size 0. Idiots.

[Embra]

I was a size 12 at 18 but became a size 14 fairly early in my 20s and went up to a 16 before I was 30. I was a size 18 for a while, but then I went on a radical "stop eating so many crisps" diet, and went back to a 16.

The clothes-size thing is a bad guide though: I went to buy some maternity trousers the other day and even the size 14 was quite baggy. I mean, I realise that's the point of maternity clothing, but I do have these trousers at their smallest "starting stretch" at the moment.

In terms of llewtrah's report though, it seems I'm ahead of the game!

[Tarquin Farquart]

I wonder what the male equivalent to this would be - 2 inches on the waist measurement?

[Mr. Furious]

Originally Posted by Embra

The clothes-size thing is a bad guide though: I went to buy some maternity trousers the other day and even the size 14 was quite baggy. I mean, I realise that's the point of maternity clothing, but I do have these trousers at their smallest "starting stretch" at the moment.

Clothing sizes are problematic because, as Ryda said, they're so arbitrary. A size 0 at, say, Old Navy, might equate to a size 4 at Banana Republic, even though the stores are owned by the same company.

Men's sizes aren't quite as bad, but sizes can still be different from store to store; I have jeans that purport to have a 34" waist that are a bit snug, and some that are very loose around the waist. I wonder how much of that is playing into male vanity.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

I can't remember where I heard or read it, but after reaching our adult build (I guess at age 18-20) women supposedly gain one dress size for each decade of life.

I would be surprised if, in this era of constant pressure to retain the appearence of youth and the constant nagging to remain a certain size (despite the consequences) if that's the case in general.

I know all of my female relatives (with the exception of G-ma), diet constantly, no matter their age, to retain a certain clothing size. Now, the males? Another story. Most of them, quite literally, won't diet to save their lives.

It's probably quite natural for most people to gain weight as they age, esp. if they breed and birth. But, these days, what's natural seems to becoming more and more abhorrant.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

Oh, yeah, I forgot to add that women's clothing sizes are so darned arbitrary, that it greatly decreases the possibility of this being true.

[Cervus]

Originally Posted by Ryda Wong, EBfCo.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to add that women's clothing sizes are so darned arbitrary, that it greatly decreases the possibility of this being true.

Exactly. I have pairs of jeans with size labels ranging from 4 to 9. They all have exactly the same measurements.

One of my bathing suits is labeled size 8. The other is labeled size 16! They measure and fit exactly the same. (And let me tell you, that was a mind-NFBSK when I had to keep returning to the dressing room with larger and larger suits, trying to figure out if the manufacturer had mislabeled them!)

I'm not sure how a woman can positively say "I wear a size...." since clothing sizes change with each maufacturer. I'm an extremely small-framed person and I generally wear between a 4-6, but a long time ago I learned not to bother looking at the size label and instead look at the actual amount of fabric and how it's tailored. That's the easiest way for me to tell if something's going to fit me.

It is normal for most people (male and female) to gain weight as they age due to changes in metabolism and lifestyle. But since dress sizes, genetics, and lifestyles all differ, gaining "one dress size per decade" is only a coincidence if it happens to you.

[Mr. Furious]

Originally Posted by Ryda Wong, EBfCo.

It's probably quite natural for most people to gain weight as they age, esp. if they breed and birth.

I agree (and it's certainly the case with most of my acquaintances), but it's dangerous to look at a slim woman in her 30s or 40s with a couple of kids and assume that she's dieting, obsessing about their weight, or unhealthy in some way. I didn't get that from your post, but that seems to be the sentiment in some quarters.

My wife is thin. She just sort of is. She doesn't diet or obsess about her weight. I have to monitor my weight constantly to avoid getting fat, but she doesn't.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

My wife is thin. She just sort of is. She doesn't diet or obsess about her weight. I have to monitor my weight constantly to avoid getting fat, but she doesn't.

So is my cousin. She's 5-4 and has never even reached 100 lbs. She eats constantly. However, that's an abbaration (just as much as natural obesity is) which is held up as the standard.

Nothing wrong with her or my cousin, provided they are healthy. Nothing wrong with someone who's BMI falls into obeses, provided they are healthy. But, the point is that the emphasis isn't on healthy or natural or even reasonable. It's on artificial standards (creams, diets, new clothes as you yo-yo, make-up, hair, surgery, etc.) to be maintained at great expense, but never reached, else the market fails.

Understand that comprehending the pressures and manufacture of the standard in general has nothing to do with the people who naturally express some part of that standard. Now, I realize that some folk are so angry and tired that they may speak out of turn, or without thought. But that dosen't mean that every time we try to talk about the standard, we need someone coming in with off-topic stories of the 2% of the population who naturally fit into it. It's rather like discussing the status of the african-american communtiy, and having someone go "But Colin Powell and C. Rice." Or attempting to have a discussion about how attitudes toward gender breed domestic violence, and having someone bring up "But it happens to men, too!"


We get it. Really. But it's an abberration that, while it deserves discussion and analysis, is quite off-topic, intrusive, and distracting.

And, no, not all of this ire is directed at you personally. It's a general perspective.

[Mr. Furious]

I understand that, Ryda, but these threads invariably end up with comments like "sero size, zero shape and zero appeal," and that's why I feel the need to post. Offhand comments like that are even less constructive. But hey, if it makes everybody happy, I'll leave those sorts of comments unchallenged.

[Tarquin Farquart]

It's easy to blame thin models for anorexia. After all, most of them wouldn't dream of answering back

But isn't it possible, since the causes of this illness are so complicated, that the ban would make no difference at all? It could be that for many young women, anorexia has its antecedents in something much closer to home, or school. And that, in any case, it is not the catwalk's etiolated six-footers whose appearance most contributes to what Jowell calls "the tyranny of thinness", but the more conventional ideals of attractiveness that are continuously reinforced everywhere, from broadcasting to politics. If so, a lot might be achieved, very quickly, by persuading admired figures such as, say, Konnie Huq and Zadie Smith, Fiona Shaw and Ségolène Royal, to gain a stone or three.

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by Ryda Wong, EBfCo.

I would be surprised if, in this era of constant pressure to retain the appearence of youth and the constant nagging to remain a certain size (despite the consequences) if that's the case in general.

Isn't that as much of a generalisation as my comments on models? The nagging to stay a certain size is cultural rather than global.

[inkrose115]

My poor sister is in her 30s and naturally thin. Everyone assumes she must be dieting hard or something, and some are even jealous. Well, she does look like some kind of health freak, I mean she's way taller then me and doesn't weight all that much more. But she was annoyed because she was at the neighbors house visiting and the neighbor bought all health food, diet food (which she hates the taste of) assuming that was what she lived on.

We're all in the mating game it seems. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. People either despise you for being who you are, or despise you when you try and be something else.