The article has mounds of data that to speak to exactly how the clothing sizes ARE the issue. Inconsistencies within brands, across brands, shifting vanity sizes, and shapes designed to fit only 12% of women. And yet, the top comment is about obesity...

Yes, obesity is clearly an epidemic. But discounting the entire article's premise to point that out?

The article points out that the problem is deeper than this:

> Once I compared my personalized sloper to commercial patterns and retail garments, I had a revelation: clothes were never made to fit bodies like mine. It didn’t matter how much weight I gained or lost, whether I contorted my body or tried to buy my way into styles that “flatter” my silhouette, there was no chance that clothes would ever fit perfectly on their own.

Yeah, I didn't want to be nasty about it, but the article saying that 37" is the median adult American woman's waist measurement is... pretty shocking. Like, I'm a 6' slightly out of shape dude and my waist fluctuates from 33-35". You'd have to be pretty large to have a feminine figure and have the narrow part be 2" wider than my widest section.

Despite the article highlighting only people of width as the "millions of people who are excluded from standard size ranges", sizing is also a problem in the other direction: it's practically impossible to find well-fitting clothes if you're tall and in decent shape. To your point, though, perhaps there was a time when "large" and "x-large" meant "slightly tall" and "quite tall" rather than "slightly tall plus obese" and "quite tall plus very obese".

I do support addressing obesity (see my elsethreads), but duly noted that it’s not a cure-all panacea for the problems faced by women. Obesity does not address the nine different U.S. body shapes; one can be obese and rectangular, or obese and spoon, or obese and triangle. Resolving obesity is a worthy cause, but will only reduce or remove the impact of size inflation on ‘vanity’ sizing as a whole, without addressing the significant disparity of sizes between manufacturers or the near-total lack of products for the eight non-hourglass body shapes.

I remember a survey of explanatory variables for obesity. The variable that explained more was the size of corn subsidies.

The hypothesis was: if you produce it, it will be consumed (Say's Law). Lower prices mean larger quantities demanded. (I know, it sounds like a confounding variable, you need a cross-sectional regression)

I am really surprised about the sharp increase in body size by age in the USA.

I have just anecdotal experience here in Europe, but I know for a fact that all the females in my family have kept the same size since they were 16-18 years old. That’s also my experience with the male side of the family.

I'll point out a statistical hazard here. While CDC lists the average height and weight at 5'3" and 172 lbs, the medians appear to be 5'3" and 161 lbs. That's a BMI of 28 and is considered overweight (25-30), not obese. Although I'll mention BMI is a pretty rough measure to begin with.

Yea, if you read between the lines in this article this stands out. Over half of all adult women don't fit into regular sizes. "Plus size" is not normal.

> I feel like a better angle would be educating people that 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks sugar for breakfast is not healthy.

An even better angle is educating Starbucks to stop selling unhealthy garbage.

The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. They have way more agency over what we consume than individuals do.

You can be in perfect shape and still not find clothes that fit. The issue IS the sizes.

Yeah I wanted to point out the same. This sizing problem is not as prevalent outside of the US/Mexico (leaders in obesity).

It’s less prevalent in EU and even less so in some East Asian countries.