Like Molly-Mae, I Have To Size Way Up In Zara And Other High Street Stores – Don’t We All?

There’s no way of saying this that doesn’t sound dodgy, so let me just come out with it: I am, what some would call, a skinny little bitch. I have been all my life. My sister regular compares by body to Slenderman, my friends obsess over my abs at every opportunity and my nan (God rest her problematic soul) spent every Saturday afternoon visit telling me I needed 'another pan of scouse'.

Why then, according to the size guides of various fashion outlets, does by body only fit comfortably into size 14-16 trousers?

I say this not to complain, and I should make that clear, because first of all, I'm lucky enough that my self-esteem it not dictated by the number on my jeans - likely the result of all the skinny privilege I've experienced as a thin woman. But second of all, because as all the women in my life who look incredible at any size have taught me, size really does not matter.

What does concern me, though, is that if my thinner-than-average body has the waist size of a 14-16 in most shops, we surely have a problem when it comes to women's sizing in general, and we need to discuss that. Many women would admit that their self-esteem is tied to their clothing size, so what is this incredibly confusing and conflicting sizing system doing to their mental health?

In fact, it's a trending topic right now thanks to fashion influencer Molly-Mae Hague, who posted about her favourite Zara jeans on Instagram yesterday noting that she 'picked up a size 14 for reference'. Molly subsequently went viral on Twitter after countless women shared their experiences of sizing up in high street stores, making the point that if she is buying a size 14, it only shows how much we need to change our attitudes to standardised sizing.

It's a topic I've thought about a lot since realising I could only fit comfortably in size 14-16 jeans despite my admittedly Slenderman like figure, but allow me to start at the beginning.

When I was 16 years old, my textiles teacher took my measurements in the middle of a lesson and announced they were ‘34-28-34’. I remember it vividly because she referred to them as ‘perfect’ - a comment I loved at the time but now I look back, makes my skin crawl. I was a size 6-8 back then, all my clothes told me so, and due to the fact I’m 5ft7, I often looked very thin. All my teenage years, my BMI told me I was underweight – of course, it was the noughties, so my immature brain relished that.

Now, however, if 16-year-old me had a size 28inch waist, I’d be a size 12 according to various outlets - including NastyGal, Bershka and Zara. Just one decade later, at a time when we’ve apparently made strides in recognising the sizing flaws in women’s clothes and began catering more to larger bodies, a size 8 pair of trousers appear to have shrunk by two inches. I should note this is also at a time when all people across the UK are only getting bigger, with waistlines growing an inch every decade. In fact, the average women's waist size in the UK is 33inches.

My waist certainly has grown since I was 16. Twelve years on, it’s 30.5 inches and up until recently, I would consider my clothes size in trousers to be a 10. I’m still thin - my very active lifestyle and extremely boring eating habits often resulting in a (morning) four-pack and with that, visible ribs. I say that with caution, because it’s not a flex, but because I'm aware it’s an indicator of thinness that some would even consider ‘too’ skinny. And yet once again, in today’s sizing measurements, my 30-31inch waist would actually make me a size 14.

I figured this out over one weekend in 2021, when I was shopping for trousers that would fit comfortably so I could ease myself back into social outings after a year of living in loungewear during the pandemic. For years, I’d become accustomed to buying jeans that ‘hugged’ my figure, of course that means those jeans you can’t sit down in without making a face, the ones we so casually put on while laughing ‘I just won’t eat in these!’ as if that’s not something we need to do to, you know, survive.

Casting that attitude aside, comfort clothing was high on my re-entry agenda, and I wanted to find trousers that I could actually, God forbid, breathe in. Thankfully, baggy trousers were (and are still) in fashion, long may they reign. So I scrolled through the size guides, measuring my waist as I went, and realised that in order to be able to breathe in any of these trousers, I would need to buy a size 16. Of course, I then couldn’t buy them at all because the hip size would be too big, as would the width of the leg most likely (I love a flared jean, but I’m not trying to take off as I walk).

Again, it’s not the fact I had to buy a size 16 that upset me - it's what it says about our sizing system in general, and how it makes other women feel that they can seemingly be seven different sizes at once depending on the shop you go to, or have your size go up thrice in just a few years despite your body not changing.

If my small waist only fits comfortably into size 14-16 jeans, what sizes are everyone else being forced to buy that 10 years ago, didn’t reflect the same thing? ‘If you’re a size 16, I’m a 22,’ my mid-size sister told me over the phone, expressing similar anguish at how she has sized up from her usual 14 in the last year.

By the same token, one must ask, how thin do you really have to be to fit into a size 8-10 in this country? If the current size 8 has a 26-inch-waist, according to NastyGal, that’s still smaller than the average waist of a 16-year-old in the UK. So, are we only making clothes for tiny children now? Or are we just making clothes for adult women that are modelled on children’s bodies?

As I asked myself these questions, I googled the average women's waist size in the UK, found it's 33 inches and stumbled across the NHS website page on 'healthy waistlines'. It states that if your waist is above 31.5 inches – irrespective of your height or BMI – ‘you should try and lose weight’. That means I, with all my visible ribs, only have one inch of room to spare before a doctor would advise me to try and lose weight. Hell, I’d probably have that waist size after a big dinner. I'll also note that according to my BMI (which I say with rolled eyes), I could gain 10kg and still be considered a 'healthy weight' - as if 10kg wouldn't at least add one inch to my waistline.

With that in mind, it seems as though our attitude towards waistlines is just incredibly messed up across the board. We know now that BMI calculators have largely been discredited as good health indicators by hordes of scientists, as have calories as indicators of good nutrition, and yet we’re still being told to measure ourselves against them. It’s not outside the realm of possibility then, that our attitudes towards waist sizes are backwards too.

Of course, I’m not a health expert – and the NHS website states that larger waist sizes put you at greater risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and strokes. I can’t speak to the health implications of your waistline then, but I can speak to how wild it is that clothing brands don’t reflect the very real waistlines we all have.

When will brands stop modelling their trousers on the skinniest among us, knowing it doesn’t reflect the large majority of our population? When will they account for the fact that we want to wear their clothes while we sit on the couch, dine with friends or just… breathe out? We shouldn’t have to be squeezing into sizes that only appear to be getting smaller, they should be made to fit our bodies with all of our daily fluctuations.

It seems that we only have two options: standardised sizing across the board that are measured against average UK bodies (with alternatives for various body types), OR we go down the tailoring route in the same way we buy jeans from places like Levi or ASOS. We input our measurements, click order and voila, we have clothes that fit without the need for a roundabout figure. No longer would women have to base their self-esteem on a standard size, nor worry when that size miraculously doesn’t fit them in a few years’ time despite no change in their body.

Yes, it will be more timely for clothing brands and more expensive too, but if cutting costs or saving time means countless women are left confused about their size, disheartened by discrepancies or unable to buy anything at all, surely it’s worth it to make the effort. I’ll certainly be choosing brands with more realistic sizing from now on, and if money really does talk – maybe that will be the difference we can all make.

Read More:

Can You Use Fashion Rental Platforms When You're A Size 14 And Above?

If The Catwalks Are Really Waking Up To Body Diversity, Why Is Still So Hard To Find Clothes That Fit?

Great Jean Debate: How Many Sizes Are You?