Name: Christine Sharma
Age: 20
Body Type: I’m going to say standard.
This is not another article on how you should love your body no matter what size or shape you are.
This is about how all of our bodies are standard body types. You don’t have to define yourself as a “size” or a “shape”. You are not fat and you are not skinny, because using words like “fat”, “skinny”, “tall”, and “short” attempts to define what a “normal” body type is in terms of how much you deviate from the norm. But if everybody has different body types, aren’t we all normal? Can we not all have standard bodies?
I was looking for a cheap pair of jeans a few days ago because I’ve been wearing out my tights and yoga pants (awesome alternatives, by the way, so comfy). I grabbed a couple of size fives to try on because those fit me last time I went shopping for jeans.
Only this time, the size fives got stuck on my thighs.
After contorting my legs in the fitting room, I managed to peel off the size fives and go up a size (the horror!) to the sevens.
The sevens fit everywhere; only this time, there was a gap between the waistband and my back, right above my hips. I decided to go with the sevens, and my mom suggested I get the waistband tailored while I remembered the days in high school when I hoped to never go bigger than my size three.
When I got home, I realized that all of my other jeans are either a five or a three and they still fit me. And then the thought came to me: maybe I’m not getting bigger—maybe store sizes are getting smaller to skew our perceptions of ourselves! Maybe sizes are a conspiracy…
Regardless, I’ve concluded that what matters is not the number on the tag at the store. What matters is that the clothes fit. Sizes at stores should only be a measure of what will and will not fit you. Even if you don’t fit into a size, take your clothes to a tailor, or learn how to tailor. It’s okay to not fit into a store size. We are all normal!
So I am comfortable with all of UTM knowing that I am a “size seven” with a “tailored waistband”.
I bet Beyoncé doesn’t fit into store sizes either.
