Overweight America Means Being Heavier Is Seen As Normal

I've always known that clothing sizes are largely arbitrary, at least for women's clothes. See, to make consumers feel better, manufacturers kind of "make up" numbers. Apparently women don't mind trading a standardized scale for something that just makes them feel better about themselves.

I don't know how they stand it. But that's the Asperger's in me.

At any rate, a new article found here discusses the new trend in weight in America: due to obesity being on the rise in the general populace, people who are on the heavier end of "normal" see themselves not as overweight but as normal weight.

In other words the old joke about feeling better about being overweight by hanging around with people more overweight is being proven as an actual effect.

Because more and more people are overweight and we are a communal species, a species that relies on our interactions with other people to judge, in part, ourselves, the label of "normal weight" is starting to slide higher as the average weight of our society slid higher.

What does this have to do with clothes? One of the points brought up in the article is that clothing for women has begun sliding again among certain clothing manufacturers. As the article points out, depending on the label, a woman could be a size 14 but the clothes at the Conglomomart that fit her are a size 10.

Despite all the noise being made about fitness and health it's good to know that old habits...namely making compromises to accommodate the delusions of an overindulgent society in the name of profit and "feeling good" about itself...are still a constant that can be relied upon.