I was doing a bit of research on prices for some home renovations when I accidentally learned something. Vanity sizing has absolutely nothing to do with how much room the sink in your bathroom will take up!

When I started looking for different sizes of vanities that were available for sale, I couldn't help but notice the sites online that were devoted to vanity to vanity sizing. Of course I realized that different bathrooms had different requirements, but vanity sizing turns out to be about clothing, not bathroom fixtures.

In case you didn't know, I'll give you the quick update. Vanity sizing refers to a trend in clothes which fixes the problem of people getting larger, by making the sizes more forgiving (this seems to be very prevalent in the United States). This means that what used to be a size 8 might now be a size 4. Manufacturers actually changed the way they size things so that women who obsess on clothing size can now tell people that they wear a size they are proud to announce. I guess this is brilliant from a marketing point of view. If you fit into a smaller size made by some designer, you will probably go with that designer over and over rather than switch to a brand that instantly sticks a label on you that is four sizes bigger.

There are those who say this is a myth, but once I read about this, I realized that I've seen the same phenomenon before when I did some selling on eBay. Sellers who list "vintage" clothing often include a note to potential buyers that these older pieces of clothing might be sized differently than the clothing they are used to wearing. It is pretty much standard practice to include actual measurements so that buyers can compare what they see to something that they know actually fits them.
photo credit: brdavids

What does this say about us as an increasingly obese society? Well, I'm not sure and I don't want to get too deep here. There are a lot of people who will probably write books about it. For myself, I remember the stigma of having to shop in the "Husky" section at Sears when I was a kid. I guess those would be politically corrected by now and labeled something much more gentle and kind. I don't know what they would be called, but I guess feeling good is good enough...