Once upon a time, when small was small, medium was medium and large was large, retail clerks could breeze through an entire shift with a five-worded question.
Clerk: "What size do you take?"
Customer: "Medium."
The End.
But these days, a confluence of global forces – lack of standardized measurements, outdated sizing models, a fashion industry prone to whim, vanity marketing, and the fact garments now appear to be tagged in factories by blindfolded monkeys – has made shopping for clothes a soul-sucking adventure.
That once reliable question has been modified with a sixth word.
Clerk: "What size do you usually take?"
Customer: "Medium"
Clerk: "Well, although this shirt is marked `medium,' it's kind of large for `medium.' Think of it as a `marge.'"
Customer: "Okay. Do you have anything in a normal medium?"
Clerk: "Unfortunately, no."
How did this happen?
How did sizing become so random, arbitrary, discrepant and meaningless?
Last year in Spain, the country's health ministry concluded a year-long study that recommended new sizing standards.
A few months later, in Australia, a national survey found that 64 per cent of respondents owned "mixed-size" wardrobes.
Returning to the Nordic research, an online release published this week on ScienceDaily contained some troubling news for every non-nudist in the free world.
"Trousers have to be tried on," warned the researchers. "The variation between size labelling and actual clothing size is huge ... Trousers labelled as size `L' can in some cases even be smaller than trousers labelled as size `S.'"
I don't know what this research cost. But they could have saved money by merely shadowing me as I recently wandered around the Eaton Centre.
The mission: Buy a new pair of jeans. The problem: Finding a new pair of jeans that didn't make me look like a gigolo, scuba diver, disco revivalist, serial killer, circus clown or exhibitionist.
"Are you sure these are a 33?" I asked a clerk in one store, after emerging from a fitting room – one of the first times in my adult life – with a pair of jeans that refused to creep up past my knees.
"Yes," he said. "But they're a slim fit."
"A slim fit for humans?"
And so it went, store after store, fitting room after fitting room. Finding a pair of jeans that fit was like finding Paris Hilton in a public library: It could not be done.
"How are they?" a clerk would shout through the tiny door.
"Not good," I'd squeal, my voice as high as Michael Jackson on helium.
At one point, I briefly considered commandeering the public address system:
"Can someone please sell me a pair of normal-rise, age-appropriate, non-embarrassing blue jeans? Please?"
Ladies, an apology is in order. You warned us about sizing insanity but we were too busy complaining about waiting outside the fitting room as you wisely tried on every would-be purchase, sometimes twice.
As it turns out, waiting is infinitely superior to using one of those godforsaken hellholes.
Why is it so cramped in there? Why does that mirror make me look so skinny? Why does my size keep changing when my body does not?
So let us now join forces and gather as a torch-bearing mob. In our ill-fitting chinos and ridiculously puffy skirts, let us descend on the headquarters of clothing multinationals and protest this sartorial travesty.
I, for one, am taking a stand. That is, just as soon as I can stand up in my new pants.
