The Gap is a conspiracy to make you believe things about yourself that are simply not true. The proof:
Colleen and I went to The Gap yesterday. I haven't stepped in that store for...um...I don't know, a long time. Two years, maybe. But I went in because Colleen told me they had some cute, simple jean skirts on sale, and I was in the market for one.
I rarely buy clothes. I usually save my clothes-buying outings for the annual (and in good years semi-annual) shop-a-thon with my lovely mother. Hence why I had no idea about the state of American clothing until yesterday.
I have news for everybody: in concordance with growing American obesity, sizes have actually changed. A 6 is no longer a 6, and a 14 is no longer a 14. Kids, The Gap's gap has widened. A lot.
I know this because I yesterday I found out I am two sizes smaller than I was the last time I bought something at The Gap. And the last time I bought something at that store would put me at about age 18, making yesterday's shopping experience somewhere around five years and 212 helpings of French cheese later than the date of my last Gap adventure.
As I come from a family of Amazons, I am rather used to having to dig through piles of smalls and sixes before finding my golden size. And most times, when I do find it, the pants are just too damn short or the ankle-length skirt looks more like an awkward calf-length contraption.
But there I was, yesterday, actually testing between two single-digit sizes. The friendly Gap man asked me what size I was, and I responded quite honestly that I didn't know. He said, "You look like either a 6 or an 8" and he pushed some clothes into my arms. I laughed and told Colleen he was full of shit, but I went to try them on anyway, snagging a 10 and a 12 on the way.
I think the last time I made it into a 6 was when I was 13 and had cut all forms of sugar out of my diet for a year or two while also maintaining an obsessive excercise regime. Back when I would wait for everybody to go to sleep so that I could run up and down the stairs for an hour or so to burn off whatever dinner I had eaten, after which I would wrote down everything I had eaten that day in a food journal (and would feel rather accomplished when any given day's list was shorter than the previous day's).
I managed to stay a precious but much-fought-for size six for awhile before realizing how good food tastes when I'm hungry and that they weren't kidding when they said the body needs its nutrients. That was probably somewhere around 15 or 16 when I was playing two sports and I figured I could eat like a cow (without the regurgitating thing) because my body had become an athletic, calorie-burning machine. That period was short-lived - just a couple of months - but it made me come to terms with the fact that that food is a good thing and not my nemesis. Even so, it took me until the age of 19 or 20 to actually start eating regularly and semi-normally, and even now I still relapse into periods of extreme constraint and an uncomfortable state of hyper-awareness of my caloric intake. Still, now I can eat dessert sometimes and not feel like I have to pay for it later, and I can even stuff my face with cookies at Christmastime like a normal daughter/sister should when her family makes 1,724 perfect batches of perfectly scrumptious chocolate chip cookies and Russian tea cakes.
Regardless, every woman has her food issues, some more than others. Me, I put myself in the had-a-lot-of-problems-with-food-once-upon-a-time-but-am-trying-to-accept-and-deal-with-my-body-the-way-it-is-today-while-still-eating-a-healthy-and-balanced-diet types. Even so, I freak out occasionally and have had to ban certain foods from my grocery cart out of a fear they'll show up in my thighs. Like granola bars, for example. I just had to stop buying them because, although one is ok for you, eating a whole box in one sitting just isn't. And invariably, that's what I do with a box of granola bars once it makes it through my front door.
With that background in mind, I'm not ashamed to admit that yesterday at The Gap I had a brief but glorious moment where I actually thought that maybe, just maybe I really had somehow just dropped two sizes without having reverted to any of my old ruses. That maybe, just maybe, I had experienced miraculous and unexpected weight loss, despite my now accepted knowledge that I will never be a tiny pine needle of a lady without once again embracing my psychotic adolescent ways. I put on the skirt excitedly, turning and twisting in the mirror, checking and rechecking the tag to be sure that yes, it really was a 6 and that yes, it really did fit (even though the 8 fit better, just getting my ass into the 6 was exciting in and of itself).
But then Colleen (another American friend living in France) said from the cabin next door, "Dude, I'm sorry, but this is a size 6 and it's like, hanging off of me! Do you see all of this space? I'm sorry, but this is not a size 6!"
So, you know, the bubble was burst, the dream broken, the illusion shattered. Just like that. It sure felt good for a moment, but the letdown made that blissful, fantastical moment feel all he more instaneous and cruel in the end.
I'm telling you people: Mind the Gap. It's sneaky as sin.
I hate size inflation. Or deflation. Or whatever it is. I can't fit into *anything* at Kohl's. Their XS sizes are too big for me. Damned Americans.
And am I imagining things when I think that XXS wasn't a size when we were tykes, but they had to develop if (for people like Srah) because of the size shift.
Yeah, its stupid when shops randomly change their sizes, or even ways of measuring sizes.
'I'm sorry, what's size X in these new freakish measurements you're using?'
Yes- I agree with the gap conspiracy. I have never before in my entire life been a size 6- except for at the gap. It's a weird and funny thing to realize that the company is tricking us.... make my own clothes? Beg the truth out of em? the whole thing is weird.........