I recently got new pants, because, well, I like leggings and I don’t have many pants. About a month ago I went shopping, and I saw some jeans that I liked and I grabbed my size and threw them in the cart. Now I usually range between a size four and a size six, I am not telling you this to share my size, but because it is pertinent to the story. So I knew I had gained some weight, so I grabbed the six, all my other pants were fitting fine, so I just went on the bigger size of my range. I have bought pants at this store for years because their sizes were always true to women’s sizes and, well, women’s butts.
When I got home and took my new jeans out, I held them up and realized they looked small. I put them on and I could button them, but they didn’t fit right, they were pushing my sides in and there was bulge on top. I thought it was weird, but I blamed it on the fit or the style that I grabbed. I left it at that, hung them up in my closet and said, “they are close to fitting and I want to shed some pounds anyway, so they might fit in a month or so”. A few weeks later, I still wasn’t comfortable in them, so just a week ago I ordered some pants from the same place, the same store. They got delivered today and for curiosity’s sake I took my size four jeans and put them underneath the, now size eight jeans, because the size sixes didn’t fit. Oddly enough, they almost match, the size four jeans are actually half a centimeter past the size eight.
Now for the older jeans, that I got a few years ago, it makes sense that they would stretch a little bit, I don’t wear them often, but you wear them, you wash them, it’s normal; but to stretch a whole two sizes and a little more, that’s not realistic.
Women have a hard enough time with what society tells us we should look like, the last thing we need is to go into the store to buy jeans and have to get two sizes up. No wonder there are self-esteem issues, self-confidence issues, and women who just wear leggings and sweats all the time, at least your leggings and sweats don’t bring you down.
I knew that this was an issue, that stores were making their sizes smaller and smaller, but I never thought that this store would, this store has always been my go-to for empowering women and making clothes that were true fit. But if my old size four jeans are now the new eight, and the sixes are the new ten, we will soon land into plus sizes for women who aren’t, so imagine how all women are feeling? A woman who was a size eighteen, is now a size twenty-two, but her size hasn’t actually changed, but that’s not what the number on her pants say. Society has made us feel that the number on our pants represents our self-worth, but it comes to a point where women will longer shop, because stores are making us feel worthless. Now some people may blame women for feeling this way, I mean, I have heard it, I have been told it, “get over it” “it’s just a number” “why are you paying attention to that” “just buy clothes that fit, it doesn’t matter”. At first I did blame myself, because everyone around me made me feel like it was my own problem, and then I realized that it is not. That society put this problem on me, the stress and anxiety that already takes place in our day to day lives, society has made it even worse, when our stress starts by putting on a pair of pants.
Now I am angry and frustrated. I have suffered from eating disorders, I have gone from overweight, to underweight and everything in between. My body image issues started young, I didn’t feel empowered, there wasn’t really many women around me that empowered me because most of them were complaining about the size of their pants, so I began to look at the size of mine. Well I am not anymore. In the women’s department, why we sell clothes based on a number, instead of measurements, I will never understand. You can’t bring down a precise measurement, you can’t make it smaller, that’s the measurement, those are the pants that you buy. But it won’t happen, society has too much control over how we believe in ourselves, but we need to stand up.
That little girl that watches you, idolizes you, looks up to you, don’t show her the damage that society did, empower her. Show her that a number does not represent her worth, that she decides her value, it is in her control. And maybe… if enough young girls turn into empowered human beings, heads will turn and things will change. Change the number.
When our stress starts by putting on a pair of pants. Change the number.
#changethenumber