I have to confess that I absolutely hate shopping.  Clothes shopping in particular, but especially dress shopping.  Not only is it stressful because I have to drive a minimum of an hour away to find clothing stores it also tends to bring up old insecurities caused by years of bullying in middle and high school.  Did I mention that it’s also nearly impossible to find a dress between ‘Amish’ and ‘Look at everything I’ve got’?  Ugh.

So obviously you guys can tell I had to go shopping recently.  I had to find a dress for an occasion in the summer and the two dresses I bought two years ago aren’t sufficiently formal so off I went a-shopping.  When I got to a dress store the clerk asked what size I normally was and I told her about a dress size four.  She looked at me like I had grown an extra head and went off to find me something semi-modest but not grandmotherly.  When she came back I tried on a beautiful blue dress that fit me like a glove; it seemed to be made for me.  But when I went to check the price tag it said that the dress was a size ten.  I didn’t like the shade of blue so I ordered in another colour in the same style only to learn that sample dresses are often inconsistent with the actual sizes.  Therefore the clerk had to take my measurements only to tell me I was a size twelve.

This just highlights the stupidity and the arbitrary nature of clothing sizes.  There are no standard sizes for clothing, dresses especially.  I have gained a bit of weight since I last went dress shopping but I don’t think five pounds shoots you up from a size four to a size twelve.  Clothing manufacturers seem to base sizes off some mythical algorithm that bears no relation to the sizes of their competitors.  This is apparent in t-shirts because I can take anything from an extra small to a medium but it seems particularly bad in dresses.  It’s just very, very frustrating and is the main reason why I never shop online for clothes.

Ladies, have you noticed that dress sizes vary wildly from brand to brand?  And gents, do you have this problem with your clothes too?

Please, someone tell me I’m not the only one with this problem.