You know an article is going to be bad when it’s titled Letting it all hang out: For many young women, one size fits all – no matter how that makes them look.
And, not surprisingly, it comes with a fair bit of fat-shaming. Of women, of course — men are mentioned once, as the article applauds them for hiding their fat under baggy clothes. Women, though, are referred to as “Sausage Casing Girls” for wearing too-tight clothing.
The Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they’ve been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.
Has this writer been to LA lately? Because women of all sizes stuff themselves into teensy tops and skintight pants. I suppose its just more offensive if the women doing the stuffing are heavy.
But this phenomenon does not appear entirely to be about self-acceptance and the conscious abandonment of repressive physical ideals. It is far more complicated than that. Yes, there are plenty of young women who can confidently say that they are happy with their less-than-svelte shapes — and that is to be applauded. But there are many others who in the rush to be fashionable are unable to admit that they are larger than they wish to be, or that their bodies just don’t look good in the clothes they are choosing. Instead of reveling in their big, beautiful bodies, many girls instead are deep in denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a python squeeze.
Poor dears, so ignorant of how hideous they are. Of course, it’s doubtful that this writer would be so bothered if a thin woman wasn’t aware of how thin she was, or if she didn’t relish her skinny figure. As for their bodies looking good, these women are never going to look “good” by the writer’s standards if we universally define “good” as “skinny.” The best bigger women can do, I guess, is button up and hide themselves from neck to ankles so that the skinny among us won’t be subjected to their offensive appearance.
However, at Potrero’s, her local 18-and-older nightclub, she said she can’t believe the number of overweight women in teensy clothes, with everything hanging out. “Fat or skinny, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The guys in there will look at you if you’re wearing a little skirt and hoochie tank top.”
You mean that men may find fat women in skimpy clothes attractive? Now that’s just sick.
After years of observing her peers, Sanchez has a theory about the Sausage Casing Girls: “Nowadays, you have kids eating so much junk food that they’re overweight and they’re trying to fit into junior sizes. They don’t want to go to bigger sizes. But junior sizes are for, like, tall, thin girls. So you have girls wearing tight jeans and you see their love handles sticking out ’cause they want to fit into the tight pants that are in style.”
Her theory is supported by those who study the psychology and self-images of girls and young women.
Well, the juniors department is supposedly for the high school set — so it’s no wonder that these girls want to shop there. For many young women, shopping is a social experience. You go with friends, you head straight to the trendy juniors section or teen-targeted store, you browse together, and you get your peers’ opinions on the clothes you try on. It’s not easy for one person in the group to request that everyone head over to the misses or plus-size section.
Not to mention the financial issue. The clothing in the juniors section tends to be knock-offs of the stuff in the rest of the store, so it’s much more affordable. I’m 22 and I still head to the juniors section when I need something simple, cheap and cute. It’s marketed to young women aged 14-20, and so it stocks clothing that women in that age group can afford. Expecting that bigger girls will pay more for their clothes, and will shop in a separate section from all their friends, seems to me to be asking a little too much.
Fifteen-year-old Nattalie Tehrani is a junior at South High School in Torrance who developed an eating disorder after gaining weight when she quit the swim team. “Fifty percent of the girls at my school wear low pants and short tops, and their stomachs are hanging out. It’s unflattering and unattractive, but there is not one kid at my school who does not have a pair of Frankie B.’s or True Religion,” she said, alluding to popular and pricey denim brands known for the lowest of low-rise waists. “Parents don’t seem like they give their kids the truth anymore — they don’t tell them that it’s inappropriate to wear clothes like that.”
Is it inappropriate to be wearing low-rise jeans with your stomach showing, period, or is it particularly inappropriate when fat girls do it?
One weekday afternoon in front of the auditorium at Venice High School, 16-year-old Ivonne Lopez was hanging out with a couple of friends, waiting for her ride home. “The girls who wear tight clothing,” she said, “well, it’s kind of hard not to. This is because everywhere you look, this is the only type of clothing available…. The only clothes that are cute and pretty are the ones that are tight. This makes me feel bad because I feel the fashion industry forgot what being a normal size was.”
Her instinct is correct: According to a study of more than 6,300 women by Cynthia Istook, an associate professor of apparel design and technology at North Carolina State University, only 8% of American women actually have the hourglass-shaped body that the apparel industry uses as its standard. Istook found that most women (66%) are either shaped like rectangles (the waist is closer to the circumference of the bust and hips) or pears (hips are larger than the bust by 2 inches or more).
The fashion world does make accommodations, though. In the last decade or so, manufacturers have adjusted sizes to reflect the reality that Americans are getting fatter. “They’ve changed sizes because girls are bigger. A 6 is no longer a 6,” said Laura Groppe, president of Girls Intelligence Agency, a research and marketing company that studies girls and women up to age 29 for clients who include apparel, cosmetics and entertainment firms. “Psychologically, we all remember when we had to go to the next size up. And so the apparel industry has said, ‘They can’t handle being told they are size 5 already, so let’s make it a bigger 5.’ “
This isn’t a big secret. But the answer, in my opinion, isn’t to oversize clothing so that a size 2 is actually a size 6. It’s to stock a wider range of sizes, and to quit emphasizing this whole size thing so much. It’s to the point where your size doesn’t mean anything anymore, anyway. So who cares if you jeans are 27s or 29s or 32s, or if the dress you’re buying is a 10 or a 14 or a 16? The fashion and advertising industries have put so much emphasis on size that too many women use it as a measure of self-worth. Articles like this certainly don’t help.
Young men are not oblivious to the legions of girls wearing too-tight clothes. Bryce Widelitz, a 19-year-old college student who works as a day camp counselor in Cheviot Hills, said he thinks two things when he sees this: “My first impression is that it’s just disgusting,” he said apologetically. “My second impression is that they are just trying to be like everyone else and fit in: ‘Everyone else is wearing it, so why can’t I?’ ”
His friend Daniel Treibatch, also 19, pinpoints the disconnect between the images the culture hurls at young women and what young women really look like. “I see it every day on the streets. These girls see what is stereotypical in L.A. — all the advertisements and all the girls on TV — and they want to emulate what they see.”
See, fat girls? Boys think you’re “disgusting” and you’re just copying what you see.
The whole issue of overweight and appropriate fit is ticklish, which quickly became apparent one recent Saturday at the Lakewood Center. The mall was full of shoppers, and it was easy to spot Sausage Casing Girls, though difficult to engage a conversation. No young woman wanted to admit — to a reporter, anyway — that she was chubby and her clothes simply didn’t fit.
Perhaps this is because approaching young women in a mall and saying, “Hi, I see that you’re chubby and your clothes don’t fit. Would you like to discuss that?” is not the best way to start a conversation. Or perhaps these women didn’t feel that they had anything to “admit.”
Now why in the world do you think there’s a clear correlation between obesity and depression/anxiety?