History of Women's Sizing: It Really Is Just a Number
Hello beautiful! I hope you're doing well! I know I definitely am, now that the school year is over! Today's post will be about women's sizing and how arbitrary it can be. In my opinion, we attach too much value to the number on the tag, especially because it varies from brand to brand. In this post, I'll talk about why those numbers vary and my personal thoughts on the system that we have here in the U.S.
Timeline of Women's Sizing
Before the 1940s, there weren't real sizing standards. Clothing for teenage girls was solely based on age, and women's sizes were based on bust size. This system was deeply flawed, but women mostly sewed their own clothes at home anyways.
Consumers wanted a change in the sizing system, and U.S. companies knew that not having set sizes was actually costing them money, so in 1939, Ruth O'Brien and William Shelton measured 15,000 women to create a standard for women's sizing. But there were still two major problems with their methods. First, the survey was conducted with white volunteers of lower economic status that didn't represent all American women. Second, the measurements still depended on bust size, which was already proven to be unreliable on a large spectrum of women.
In the late 1940s, the National Bureau of Standards(now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) worked with catalog companies to reassess the sizing system. They measured women who had served in the air force to account for a wider range of body types. By 1958, there was a new sizing system with sizes that ranged from 8-42 and height indicators, for tall (T), regular (R), and short (S) women.
But, this system drew from the results of the biased 1939 survey, so it remained unsuccessful. After many attempts to tweak the system and make it fit as many women as possible, the U.S. discarded the standard sizing as a whole in 1983. Individual brands were free to create their own sizing systems.
Early on, these companies realized something: consumers would feel better about themselves if their size was smaller. Sizes started dropping to flatter the customer and thus began what we call vanity sizing, which is still prevalent today.
Vanity Sizing
In my opinion, vanity sizing highlights one of the worst underlying ideas in the beauty industry: being skinnier means being prettier. This truly could not be further from the truth, but the fact that brands know we're insecure about our bodies and use that insecurity to make profit is both mind-boggling and infuriating.
Because of the way that vanity sizing operates in our system, our "size" is constantly changing, between brands and over time. That's why I think tying oneself to a specific size and running with it isn't the way to go when shopping. I know how big of a deal it can be for people when they don't fit into their size anymore, but that could have happened for any number of reasons that aren't related to you (besides, even if it was related to a shift in you weight, that's perfectly normal).
My biggest takeaway from learning about the recent history of women's sizing has been to pick and choose specifically what works for me for each brand and not buy clothes based on the number or letter on the tag.
I also just want to remind you all that you don't have to play a part in this twisted game that some companies play with their customers where they dig us deeper into the hole of insecurity and comparison. We as people are worth so much more than whatever size our clothes are, and one change in sizing doesn't have to change the way that we see ourselves.
That's all for today, so I hope you enjoyed this piece. I tried integrating a historical background for what I was talking about, so we could have a little more context. Let me know if that's something you'd like to see more of on this blog.
Remember, if you ever need a hand, girl, let me help!
References:
Stampler, L. (2014, October 23). When — And Why — We Started Measuring Women’s Clothing. Time. https://time.com/3532014/women-clothing-sizes-history/
The History of Clothing Sizing. (2025). BU Style.
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