Sized Out: Women, Clothing Size, and Inequality

Abstract

Feminist scholars have long critiqued the fashion industry's ultra-thin beauty standards as harmful to women. Combining data from three qualitative studies of women's clothing retailers-of bras, plus-size clothing, and bridal wear-we shift the analytical focus away from glamorized media images toward the seemingly mundane realm of clothing size standards, examining how women encounter, understand, and navigate these standards in their daily lives. We conceptualize clothing size standards as "floating signifiers," given their lack of consistency within and across brands and the extent to which women engage in identity work and body work in relation to them. our findings indicate that the instability of these unregulated standards allows some women-particularly those with bodies located closest to the boundaries between size categories-to claim conformity to body ideals and to access some of the associated psychological, social, and material privileges. however, even as individual women may benefit by distancing themselves from stigmatized size categories, this pattern renders women's body acceptance tenuous while simultaneously reinforcing hierarchies among women based on body size and shape.

“Fat People Exercise Too!”: Perceptions and Realities of Shopping for Women’s Plus-Size Exercise Apparel

“…Fashion and merchandising experts should consider not only how the needs framed within the FEA model, including functionality, expressiveness, and aesthetics, can be better met, but also other ways in which constraints on personal control over apparel (Christel et al, 2016) create broader social justice (Lee & Cubbin, 2009) and identity issues (Meadows & Bombak, 2019). As Bishop, Gruys, and Evans (2018) contend, “Unequal access to clothes that fit appears to have implications for social inequality (p. 185).” The psychological, social, and physical benefits afforded to women who are able to manage their impressions and identities as physically active individuals are not distributed equally, and access to exercise apparel for women with larger bodies may play a role.…”

“Making Over” Poor Women: Gender, Race, Class, and Body Size in a Welfare‐to‐Work Nonprofit Organization

“…In these recommendations, I join a burgeoning body of research (Bishop et al. ) arguing that access to well‐fitting clothes in a variety of aesthetics is an issue of inequality that feminist scholars must take more seriously.…”

“…It is linked to aesthetic labor via workers’ possession and display of particular styles of clothing and/or other bodily accoutrements, such as eyeglasses, jewelry, makeup, and so on. Recent scholarship has argued that a lack of access to well‐fitting clothes has negative impacts on women's psychological, social, and material circumstances (Bishop, Gruys, and Evans ). To the extent that poor women lack access to interview attire, social services providing this form of objectified cultural capital should help reduce inequality.…”

The Breast Size Satisfaction Survey (BSSS): Breast size dissatisfaction and its antecedents and outcomes in women from 40 nations

“…In terms of breast size dissatisfaction specifically, it is possible that breast objectification pressures decline with age (see Tiggemann & Lynch, 2001), such that older women experience less pressure to attain breast size ideals or develop embodiment practices that challenge constraining appearance ideals (Piran, 2016). Older age may also be associated with lifespan experiences, such as the transition to motherhood and breastfeeding, that help focus women's attention on breast functionality (e.g., a maternal view of breasts that emphasises nurturing; Chang, Chao, & Kenney, 2006;Earle, 2003) and reduces preoccupation with the sexual uses of breasts (Bojorquez-Chapela, Unikel, Mendoza, & de Lachica, 2013;Harrison, Obeid, Haslett, McLean, & Clarkin, 2019;Lombardo et al, 2019), though it should also be noted that midlife breast changes may also impact sexual satisfaction (Thomas, Hamm, Borrero, Hess, & Thurston, 2019).…”