Women's clothing sizes

Men get it easy: while men's sizes are at first completely incomprehensible, they actually relate to measurements. This also means that sizes are consistent from store to store. The same can not be said of women's clothing sizes.

In my aforementioned hours of leisure in the morning, I spend perhaps (ahem) too much time online shopping. One of the many many things I have learned in the process is that no two stores label clothing the same way. This even applies to stores with the same corporate parent (I'm looking at you, Gap, Inc. The sizes at Old Navy bear virtually no relation to the sizes at Banana Republic).

I understand that stores want women to feel better about themselves and that consequently sizes have changed over time--today's 8 is yesterday's 14. My sister and I recently found a shirt of my mother's from college. It looked ridiculously small, like it was made for a twelve year old. We laughed at its itty-bittyness. Until we saw the "L" on the label. But I digress.

With no clear size consensus, the women of America are doomed to spend hours trying on different sizes and feeling badly about their bodies. Worse, women buy and then wear the wrong size all the time, in part because they self-identify as a certain size and refuse to buy something larger.

Some stores have "modern size" conversions so that you know that if you used to be an 8 but are now a 10 it's not your fault. Sizes at high-end stores (including those that don't carry above a 10) run much smaller than elsewhere. A designer 12 is smaller than an Old Navy 8. And so forth.

Get it together retail establishments. Make up new size labels that bear no relation to the past and are comparable store to store. Consider something radical like sizes based on letters if numbers are too judgmental. An "a" corresponding to a 0, and so forth. If the average American woman turns out to be an "h", she won't know that is supposed to make her feel fat.