ADVENTURES IN SHOPPING

I have battled my weight since puberty.  During high school I worked really hard to keep it down and still felt like I was the big girl.  I wore a size 12 dress to my Senior Ball.  It was a beautiful, classic dress and my sister and even my mom borrowed it for events. 

I have kept it all these years and when Maggie was invited to a prom and didn't want to buy a new dress, I suggested she try it on - it's a wrap around in stretchy black jersey fabric making it easy for different sized women to wear it.  I was so shocked to see that it was too small for my size 8 daughter.  It was the first time I had run into "vanity sizing."

I am not hung up on sizing - I buy whatever size clothing I think fits best.  I am not one to wear my clothes tight and form fitting - I prefer to skim over my body and if I need to buy up a size, I do. (Maybe being hung up on clothing label size would have deterred me from gaining weight?)

Today I was reading some blogs and a woman who had weight loss surgery a couple of years ago said she is very surprised to find she's now a size 6.  She looked really great, not squeezed into a too small size.  Then I saw that she listed her weight as 154. The last time I weighed around 150 I was a size 14/16. In fact, that is the goal range I am hoping to get to.  So now I am going to be a size 6 or 8?  Cool. 

The interesting thing about this vanity sizing phenomena is that plus size clothes are not getting bigger.  In fact, many of the department store plus sizes seem to have shrunk down.  I buy most of my clothes online because of this.  I can get a 3x online that fits, but most 3x sizes in the stores don't fit!

In about 6 months my clothes shopping adventures are going to be interesting...