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Sometimes I make an effort to look around and see if I can see people approximately my size, so I can see how they dress. This is not for scoffing-at-them purposes, although that's sometimes what happens; it's for getting-ideas purposes, because I can't see a window display and have the first idea whether the outfit advertised would suit me or not. (Okay, I can have the first idea, which is probably not. But I can't get accurate specific reads from mannequins, is what I'm saying.) Do people do that? And then the trouble with this practice is, one, it's very difficult for me to tell if another woman is approximately my size or not. I can easily identify people who are very large or very small or even sort of normal medium-sized, but among the people who are on the small side of large, or on the large side of regular, I have a really hard time.
We're supposed to be everywhere -- we keep reading that the average American woman [granted, I'm not in the USA now, but I have the same trouble when I am] is a size 14; I'd be a size 15, if such a thing existed, I'm 16-with-a-belt, and I can't see my fellow sufferers anywhere. It must be that when they say "the average American woman is a size 14" they mean "the average size worn by American women is 14", which is quite a different thing. A sample group in which half the women were size 8 or below and the other half were size 20 or above would yield an average around 14, without a single actual size 14 in it.
Anyway, it's hard for me to identify people my size on sight. Sometimes I think of myself as smaller than I turn out to be -- notably, when I see pictures of myself and think, My god, I don't remember being that size on that day (because the other people in the pictures look the size I remember them looking, so one is forced to conclude that the picture is accurate). But other times, I've been aware that I think of myself as bigger than I turn out to be. Anecdote: one time The Boy Who and I were walking someplace, and I had to ask him to slow down because I was having a hard time keeping up with him, especially in my three-inch heels. He apologized and tried to walk slower, and I said something about how it's not quite fair that heels make a person taller but don't lengthen her stride. (In fact of course they shorten the stride a bit.) Not, though, I said, that even if the extra three inches were in my leg rather than strapped to my foot, they'd have made much of a difference in the area of keeping up, because he'd still have been nine inches taller than me. -- But before I could get to "you'd still be nine inches taller", he'd said "Well, right, because I'm just bigger than you." [/anecdote] I remember being surprised to hear that -- because it's true that he's a foot taller than me, but he's fairly athletic and lean. I suppose I had tended to think of myself as being a woman of, say, 5'10", but only having 5'4" of vertical space to work with.* So the horizontal dimensions had to, you know, compensate. But thinking about it, you know, I guess I know that (for example) my brother is bigger than me, because I know when I buy men's shirts and sweaters I buy them at least a size smaller than he does. (And I've got this chest! -- Things fit me differently in the chest than they fit him, obviously, but even taking that into account, the things are a size smaller.) And I know The Boy Who is about my brother's size, maybe a little bigger. So, transitively, he must be bigger than me. How strange, for a person who is accustomed to thinking of herself as Bigger Than Other People, to say nothing of seeing those pictures mentioned above, to have that sort of realization.
*This is another thing. If I do see people who I feel like might be about my size, they're invariably at least four inches taller than I am, so I can't take style cues from them anyhow.
We're supposed to be everywhere -- we keep reading that the average American woman [granted, I'm not in the USA now, but I have the same trouble when I am] is a size 14; I'd be a size 15, if such a thing existed, I'm 16-with-a-belt, and I can't see my fellow sufferers anywhere. It must be that when they say "the average American woman is a size 14" they mean "the average size worn by American women is 14", which is quite a different thing. A sample group in which half the women were size 8 or below and the other half were size 20 or above would yield an average around 14, without a single actual size 14 in it.
Anyway, it's hard for me to identify people my size on sight. Sometimes I think of myself as smaller than I turn out to be -- notably, when I see pictures of myself and think, My god, I don't remember being that size on that day (because the other people in the pictures look the size I remember them looking, so one is forced to conclude that the picture is accurate). But other times, I've been aware that I think of myself as bigger than I turn out to be. Anecdote: one time The Boy Who and I were walking someplace, and I had to ask him to slow down because I was having a hard time keeping up with him, especially in my three-inch heels. He apologized and tried to walk slower, and I said something about how it's not quite fair that heels make a person taller but don't lengthen her stride. (In fact of course they shorten the stride a bit.) Not, though, I said, that even if the extra three inches were in my leg rather than strapped to my foot, they'd have made much of a difference in the area of keeping up, because he'd still have been nine inches taller than me. -- But before I could get to "you'd still be nine inches taller", he'd said "Well, right, because I'm just bigger than you." [/anecdote] I remember being surprised to hear that -- because it's true that he's a foot taller than me, but he's fairly athletic and lean. I suppose I had tended to think of myself as being a woman of, say, 5'10", but only having 5'4" of vertical space to work with.* So the horizontal dimensions had to, you know, compensate. But thinking about it, you know, I guess I know that (for example) my brother is bigger than me, because I know when I buy men's shirts and sweaters I buy them at least a size smaller than he does. (And I've got this chest! -- Things fit me differently in the chest than they fit him, obviously, but even taking that into account, the things are a size smaller.) And I know The Boy Who is about my brother's size, maybe a little bigger. So, transitively, he must be bigger than me. How strange, for a person who is accustomed to thinking of herself as Bigger Than Other People, to say nothing of seeing those pictures mentioned above, to have that sort of realization.
*This is another thing. If I do see people who I feel like might be about my size, they're invariably at least four inches taller than I am, so I can't take style cues from them anyhow.
