Scrolling through an Instagram newsfeed of harmless selfies and cat videos, you might stop on the image of a girl holding a piece of printer paper to her stomach.
In this trend among Chinese women, the participant captions #A4WaistChallenge to show the width of the paper can completely cover up her body. While those 8.3 inches of an A4 sheet are normally meant for 31 typed characters per line, those 8.3 inches are now the newest size standard of the female waistline.
Backlash for the trend was immediate. People noted how such a standard is detrimental to a universal body image when the average American woman measures more than quadruple that number.
But what thousands of protesters, articles and bloggers fail to realize is body image issues on both sides of the controversy are destroying the industry’s sizing system.
The A4 waist isn’t the first call to introduce new size standards in the Asian community. In August 2014, the sizing spectrum shifted downward to 000 or XXXS in brands including J. Crew and Gap.
Again, the backlash was instantaneous as American women argued the new size would become a further proponent of eating disorders and negative body image. By simply tacking on another zero, they felt a new standard for women to achieve: to be that much tinier, that much skinnier and that much more of an extra small than they already were.
Just as quickly, these brands responded, explaining the new size did not have to do with American body image, but rather Asian bodies. As retail has expanded in China and Japan, those customers — who, on average, have smaller waists — were requesting smaller options.
The 000 wasn’t meant to push women to be skinnier. It was meant to provide a 23-inch pant to a woman who already has a 23-inch waist.
When that size became a standard for all women, as it did with the A4 waist, it crosses a line. Measurements should never be seen as a challenge or goal simply to benefit the body image of smaller women and belittle that of others.
Yet just as much as Asia has pulled fashion smaller, America has tugged on the opposite end. It has used the western world retail phenomena of vanity sizing to muddle our typical sizes.
This concept, though only recently named, has been evolving for decades. It accounts for why a size 2 may be a size 4, which sometimes can even be a size 8.
Basically, brands label clothes with smaller sizes than they truly are to boost the morale and confidence of shoppers, which ultimately results in more sales.
In small degrees, not much damage has been done, but as American waistlines continue to grow, we now depend on fashion to mend our confidence with false numbers.
Last August, the National Institution of Standards and Technology and the American Society of Testing and Materials released data demonstrating the outrageous inflation of clothing measurements.
In 2011 a size 00 measured between 24 and 25 inches, whereas a size 8 in 1958 measured even smaller, between 23 and 24 inches.
Furthermore, while the average size 12 was between 32 and 33 inches in 2011, it only measured between 24 and 25 inches in 1958.
So on one side we allow more zeros and more X’s to make standards we never thought possible.
Simultaneously, we muddle the lines as waistlines get bigger, yet our clothing tags tell us otherwise.
As a fact of life, bodies do change, and if sizes changed accordingly, this would only make sense. But when society manipulates fashion to secure a false sense of body security, both the Asian and American sides of the spectrum are in the wrong.
A4 or size 4, codependent ideas of body image and fashion can never survive.
bsaggese@indiana.edu
