I went shopping today....at a mall. I guess like most people, I tend to focus on what I'm wearing instead of what other people are wearing. Crowds at a mall are just so much background to my mental world.
But today I couldn't find anything to buy and everything I tried on didn't fit. I also realized that stores have wildly varying sizes and a lot of it depends on your income level. At the Gap I'm a medium. At Banana Republic I'm a Large. At WalMart, I'm probably a small.
I also realized that most people at the mall were walking around in clothes that were way too tight. I also stumbled into a shoe sale and Nordstrom and realized that most women wear uncomfortable shoes--all day--every day. I bought a pair of shoes that was super comfortable and saw a 70 year old woman wearing the same shoes as I walked out of the store.
A recent book I read by Thomas Frank pointed out that fashion and capitalism are made for each other. The art of being cool requires constant investment in things that become obsolete very quickly. It's a sucker's game played in lycra and four inch heels.
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Your comment about relative size at different stores is a very interesting observation. Perhaps we can use your size experience as a heuristic to test the thesis that poor people eat the worst, most fattening food. Please bear with me. If you (small-ish person) are a large at Banana Rep. and a medium at Gap and a small at Wal Mart what we really have is a relative size curve distributed by income. The ranking of stores I just gave you is (Banana, Gap, Wal-Mart) is an income demographic ranking. Poor people (those that shop exclusively at Wal-Mart) are huge--they eat the worst fatty foods which are also cheap--so a normal smallish person that shops there is a small. Gap is more average--people fed on good and bad food, jamba juice, organic salad AND taco bell. You are a medium--whereas Banana, haven of the would be uber-chic (Diesel is the next notch up) is for those fed on tiny slices of lettuce with a droplet of olive oil.
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