Vanity Sizing and Lowering the Bar

Have you heard of this little thing called vanity sizing? Vanity sizing, or size inflation, is basically putting smaller numbers on bigger clothes. Over the years, standard clothing sizes have changed in order to make people feel better about the size they wear, and therefore feel better about themselves.

It’s really all about money. Clothing manufacturers realize that spending money is quite often an emotional decision. Women will spend more money for a smaller size, because it makes them feel thinner, prettier, more attractive, more acceptable. As American waistlines have gotten progressively larger, the sizes on women’s clothing labels have gotten progressively smaller.

For example, the famed symbol of beauty and feminine sexuality, Marilyn Monroe wore a size 14. Now before you go tooting your horn about large voluptuous women, you have to realize that Ms. Monroe wore a 1950s size 14. By today’s sizing, Marilyn would be squeezing into a size 8. While it’s true that she was much more curvy than today’s pencil-thin models, Marilyn Monroe was definitely no chunky cow.

Maybe vanity sizing is just one more symptom of how we’ve lowered the bar of acceptable. Slowly we’ve made overweight normal. 66% of American adults are overweight. 32% of American adults are obese. Those statistics should scream at you. It’s true that overweight IS normal if more than half of us walking around in this country fall into that category, but it certainly doesn’t have to be acceptable.

I’ve heard the cries from fat people on daytime talk shows. They want to be accepted for who they are. “We should love ourselves regardless of how we look.” “We focus too much on looks.”

It’s perfectly true. We do focus too much on looks. It’s NOT about what you look like. What’s important is what’s on the inside.

But shouldn’t those insides be healthy and strong and functioning properly to keep the you - the real you, that fabulous personality inside your body - living and functioning and well, being you?

It may not be about looks, but it should be about how healthy you are. Your health affects every other aspect of your life, your energy levels, your interpersonal relationships, how you are able to spend your free time, even how you spend your money. Are you spending your money on doctor visits and prescription medications, or are you spending it on fun vacations with your family and building memories with your loved ones? Are your closest relationships strained because of low self-esteem, or are you confident and comfortable with yourself? Do you struggle through each day tired and sluggish, or are you energized to tackle the next challenge that presents itself?

Just because you should be loving yourself just as you are, doesn’t mean you can’t be striving to make yourself better. Love yourself through the process. But don’t lower the bar just to make loving yourself easier.