Undressing Mannequins: What's to Know?

Today, Norm and I went into Express, one of our favorite stores. I've loved Express for years because it tends to carry clothes for people who look like me and who have my fashion preferences; it is pretty fashion-forward for the midwest, and that means it tends to have clothes that are made for men and women of the thinner variety. Last summer, however, I realized that they no longer carried my size in jeans. Their smallest size (zero) was too big for me. I was quite angry because they were one of the last stores to start vanity sizing, but when they did it seemed that they'd suddenly erased all their lower sizes.

Anyways, I was lured into my local Express by the mannequins sporting skinny jeans that made my mouth just water with anticipation for the days jeans would once again be weather appropriate. I started picking through the front display at the store. Holding up the top pair of jeans on one pile, size zero, I was surprised by how much fabric I needed to unfold. Norm raised his eyebrows, and I'm pretty sure I looked just as shocked. These were the smallest jeans in stock, but they were also obviously not the size being worn by the plastic ladies standing above us.

Norm and I were curious, then, what the mannequins were wearing.

I tugged down the closest mannequin's jeans to where I could read the tag. Sure enough, the size was "2f". 2f??!? What the hell?

We asked a sales associate where the size 2f pants were. It seemed that he got the question a lot, so he directed us over to the 00's.

Express has since started carrying a few select pants in size 00 in their stores, which tend to fit me pretty well. Today, however, the 00's in the store were in a style of jean I didn't want to buy and they were Long length, rather than Regular.

On top of all that, the 2f jeans are still smaller cut than the 00 jeans. I'd understand if the mannequins were an entirely unusual size, but they aren't; in fact, I know a few women who are somewhere around a "2f", so it's not like the 2f's were some unnatural size that were only for mannequin use.

The truth is, though, I'm not angry at Express. They know what their customers want--to look like the mannequins--but they also probably would lose money if they carried size 2f's in the stores. We live in a world of supply and demand. Based off this simple model, if people don't demand smaller sizes, Express won't supply them. Not enough people in the United States are small enough to fit into 2f's anymore, so Express would just end up not selling those jeans if they carried them in stores. It's ideal to supply the largest demand, and people like me keep getting left in the dust.

Sometimes, I wish I lived back in the 1950's where I would have been a size 12 or larger. It is pretty demeaning to wear a size 00 when I have gorgeous thighs and a sexy butt. Trying on clothes at Express doesn't make me feel very sexy if I look at the tags. Then, I watch TV and hear some impossibly painted-over news anchor talking about how some kid died today, starving, trying to be a size zero. People start cursing size zero, and here I am, an apparent double zero.

Double nonexistent, and impossibly unsexy.

Thanks, customers of Express!

Why It's OK to Look in the Mirror and Dislike What You See Sometimes

I've been feeling ugly. A lot of that, I know, comes from my behavior. Not eating, sleeping, and exercising regularly and properly cause bad feelings in any animal, and I am no exception. Everybody has a right to look in the mirror and feel that they look like crap every once in a while because it brings us back to terms. For me, that was realizing that I need to stop treating my body like it's some sort of thankless vessel. Lately, I throw my body through things that I shouldn't, like riding my bike over sixty miles in a week and eating hardly anything, and then exercising hardly at all but eating powdered sugar out of a bowl because I feel shaky from not eating enough the next week. Just the typical don't-quite-have-a-schedule behavior, but it's taken its toll--I have a bit of acne and and a few headaches, and my muscle tone is down and my cellulite quantity is a bit up.

The point is, sometimes it's ok to look in the mirror and dislike what you see, as long as you have a plan to fix it. Don't go overboard and wish that you could make your toes longer or your skin a different color or something pretty unchangeable like that, but it's a good idea to sometimes say hey, I don't look my best right now. Maybe I need a haircut or a shower, or maybe I just need to look out for my body a little bit better. The best motivator you have to work out is looking in the mirror and seeing the thighs where you want to have strong quads, and the best motivator to drink more water is to look in the mirror and see unclear or dull skin.

The trick is to be realistic about it. In our culture, we focus too hard on being happy with what we have without realizing we can make it better, or we focus too hard on going overboard and we become unhealthy that way. If you look in the mirror and notice that you are five hundred pound and five feet tall, please realize that something is wrong. On the other hand, don't look in the mirror and decide you won't be happy until you are skeletally thin with no regard for anything else. If you are thin, you might not be healthy, but you might also be perfectly healthy. I'm thin naturally, but not always healthy. It's about learning your body, and it isn't all about gravity pulling on your mass.

Just keep in mind that you will learn to love yourself even more when you look in the mirror and see someone who is healthy. Learn to recognize lack of health in yourself, and sometimes be a little bit harsh when you look in the mirror. It might be just what you need to get back on the bike or stop eating sugar out of a bowl.

A New Look at Body Image: Today, Would Marilyn Monroe be a Size Zero?!?

If you've read my writings, you know that I have a certain affinity towards blogging about body image. A lot of this stems from my own struggles with body image throughout my life. You can read more about living as a thin young woman in a culture that likes to label us as anorexic or unattractive here. For this article, however, I set out to learn what size Marilyn Monroe would be today. The results shocked me, and made me feel really good about myself -- today, Marilyn Monroe would very likely be a size zero.

I got on a tangent of doing research about Marilyn Monroe a few days ago. It started with a discussion about vanity sizing where we were all whining about it, and I started googling what the actual measurements are for a size zero (which I am now). The measurements turned out to be anywhere from 30-22-32 inches bust-waist-hip to 33-25-35 depending on brand. Keep those in mind.

Google gave me a result about vanity sizing throughout the ages. I noted that a size 12 in the 1950's was about a 32" bust and a 24" waist, which sort of seems to fall into the size zero category. Looking at that, I would probably have been about a size 12 back then, or even bigger--I measure 34-24-34.

About the same time, I remembered a middle school assembly telling me that Marilyn Monroe, the svelte, sexy, awesome sphinx who transformed the meaning of sex appeal in the middle of the 20th century--was a size 16. This intrigued me, as many claims do, and being a great believer in asking questions, I decided to take a look at this claim.

First, I realized that the claim came from Rosie O'Donnell in 1996. "Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. That says it all," she claimed. I hate to say it, Rosie, but that does not even touch "saying it all". The size 16 Rosie referred to was a UK size 16, which translates to an American size 12. According to that dressmaker, the size 12 of Monroe's time was a 24" waist.

I was kind of struck by this, so I decided to do a bit more research. There are two claims about Marilyn Monroe's measurements: her studio's 37-23-36 and her dressmaker's 35-22-35.

Based on these measurements, Monroe would be somewhere around a zero or a two, at least pants-wise. Her top would probably be a bit bigger based on her bust, but her waist was teeny-tiny and even smaller than mine. Her hips were a bit larger than mine, but possibly only by about half an inch (I round down to 34, but I'm around a 34.almost5).

So what does this mean? This means that my "itty bitty" size zero isn't so itty bitty after all. It means that I'm sexy, almost the same size as one of America's greatest sex icons. She was a bit smaller than me in some places and a bit larger in others. For a little ending surprise, here is a picture of me with a life-size wax statue of Marilyn Monroe at Madame Tussauds in NYC. If you notice, Marilyn Monroe is pretty obviously not a size 16 today.



Sources:

Marilyn Monroe's Website
Vanity Sizing 101
Size Zero
For the Last Time What Size Was Marilyn Monroe?
US Standard Clothing Sizes
Marilyn Monroe Photo

My Thoughts on Natural Birth, and Birth in General

I guess I'd just always assumed that the reason cats and dogs have such an easy time giving birth is that the dogs and cats who died during birth never reproduced, and that wasn't the case with humans. From a young age I loved watching A Baby Story when I was home sick from school, and I remember cringing at the women's screams and the tearing of their perineums. I was intrigued. I was a believer in the power of nature, and I wondered how things went wrong…so much.

I guess I'm interested in birth because mine was pretty crazy. I was born with an emergency c-section. I'd aspirated meconium and I was a black color when I was pulled out because I wasn't getting enough oxygen, and I had to be fed with a tube in my nose for the first few days of my life.

Disclaimer here: I don't remember that. I am totally naive on the topic of giving birth, but I'm curious. So here you go.

I started watching 16 and Pregnant on sort of a dare: one of my friends told me I'd hate it. I loved it. I was interested in the whole having a baby part, especially. I'm a medicine geek. I was interested when I noticed that most of the girls on the show got this drug called Pitocin. 16 and Pregnant called it "medicine used to jump-start labor".** I knew what induction was, but up until this point I'd been of the assumption that it was only used when there was some sort of problem with the baby, not when it was two days after the due date and everybody freaked for, what looked like to me, no good reason.

As a self-defined foodie, I didn't really mean to, but I started drawing connections between birth and food. Margarine is a good example of what I'm talking about. Back in the good old days, we decided that the fat in butter was bad for us, so we created margarine. The hydrogenated fats in margarine turned out to be killing us, so we changed it. And then we changed it again. And then we added omega-3's to counteract the ridiculous amounts of omega-6's. And as it turns out, butter is still much, much better for our arteries.

I sort of started wondering if we were doing the same thing with childbirth. In the past childbirth has always been natural, but suddenly the use of c-sections has skyrocketed along with the use of various medications during labor. One in three women in the U.S. now has a c-section to give birth to her child. Obviously, some of those are necessary. If it wasn't for a c-section, I wouldn't be here, and neither would some of my friends. Many c-sections happen now because the babies would not have survived 40 years ago--I would have probably died because the doctors wouldn't even have known to get me out. In the past, premature babies weren't cut out by c-section--they were often stillborn. Today, babies born as early as five months can survive if they are placed in a solution of perfluorocarbons, a breathable liquid.

Despite the fact that kids who wouldn't have lived 50 years ago are living today, the whole 1 in 3 thing is ridiculous, especially when you look at the c-section rate in 1965: 4.5%. Today, major reasons for c-sections are rooted in medications during pregnancy, women not knowing how to listen to their bodies, medical refusal to allow a vaginal birth, funky thoughts, and more. Medications like Pitocin are thought to sometimes be related to c-sections because they make contractions more difficult, so women are more likely to get epidurals, which slow down contractions, so more pitocin, and then more epidural…and then whoops, you can't push at all. Women not listening to their bodies is an issue in all of western culture, with men as well--just think about it; if we ate what our bodies told us to eat, we'd not be so fat. Some medical professionals refuse to deliver babies vaginally if the woman has had a c-section before or if the baby is in an unusual position. Funky thoughts refer thinking that a c-section is not major surgery. I think the whole idea of a baby pushing out of your vagina is actually considered more frightening in our culture than the baby being cut out of you.

Whatever the reason, it can't be argued with that the United States has one of the highest mother and baby mortality rates in the developed world.

I also find it kind of weird that we give birth lying down. I mean, I've heard stories of women giving birth in the toilet and not even knowing it. I don't think you could give birth lying down and not know it. Studies actually show that lying down makes your pelvic opening smaller. I'm pretty sure I have a small enough pelvic opening as it is, thank you very much. Why not give birth standing or squatting? I know physics. Gravity, I'd assume, would be my friend in childbirth. I'd rather that 9.81 m/s squared pushing my baby out, not pushing down on me while I try and push the baby out in the other direction, you know? I think a lot of this is just logic, ladies (and doctors)!

This whole article is just a bunch of musings from an intrigued 20-year-old who isn't planning on having kids until after getting maybe a master's degree and a law degree. That's at least 10 years from now! All this birthing stuff will probably change by the time I'm making any decisions. We will probably have decided that extra doses of Pitocin cause ADHD or Autism or something, just like Thalidomide and the kids with no arms or legs. Either way, it's a good thing to keep my eye on because it affects everyone. It's always a good time for a person to start listening to her body. Even if it's just to decide what she wants for dinner, it will help when it comes time to figure out what position is the best to push that baby out.

Moral of the story? Don't believe everything you hear about childbirth on TV. Question everything.

I'll let you guys know what I think of this post in 10 or so years. ;-P

**When I googled it, I realized that the body naturally produces Pitocin during labor! It's called oxytocin, and then when it's sold in medicine form they call it Pitocin.

Souces:

Wikipedia on Pitocin
"Why does the National U.S. Cesarean Rate Keep Going Up?"
"The Business of Being Born", Film by Abby Epstein
Wikipedia on Liquid Breathing

So Why do Teens and Gen Y Roll Our Eyes At Our Parents for Tech Reasons?

Because you seem not to care about the most central parts of our communication. Sometimes, you actually say that you don't care.

Because when we tried to talk to you about the crisis in Tehran, Iran last summer, you said that you'd heard "something on the news" about it, while we watched real-time everything that was going on and had nightmares about Neda's death.

Because when we were young, and had so much trouble writing our names, and when it felt so strange and foreign, you told us that one day it would feel natural. You told us that we could do it and you told us that it was very important for us to know, even if we didn't quite understand it yet. We trusted you.

When it comes to technology, you don't trust us.

You didn't let us say "I just can't do this!", but you expect us to let you give up.

You laugh about our smartphones and Facebooking behind our backs, but we hear it.

And then you get a Facebook. Sheepishly.

You complain about us using technology all the time and tell us that it's making us dumber, but then you expect us to fix your computer!

You expected us to learn manners in your world, but you won't learn manners and etiquette in ours.