fat lady shopping gripe

[psocoptera]

I'm now too fat to buy pants in person at REI, bleah. "I would have to find plus sizes online." I know this is in no way a new discovery and some of y'all may have been coping with this shit for years, but, bleah, my thin privilege was *convenient* dammit. I have no idea if I want a 16 or a 16W (ha, or even if 16 is right) and I'm probably going to solve this issue by using my affluence privilege and ordering both and returning one but it would have been so much easier to just try them on when I was in the store today (dropping almost $200 on hiking boots, so fuck the implicit idea that fatties don't shop there).

(Just to be clear, the salesperson I asked was 100% polite about it, and another sales dude spent a really long time helping me with the hiking boots, so, no complaints about REI's courteous and competent sales staff. Their stocking policy bites though.)

ETA: if anyone has a good line on in-person retailers for convertible pants, please let me know. I love me some dorky zip-offs.

Comments

[ursula]

In my recent experience, REI pants sizes run small, so even knowing your size other places doesn't help.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

In this case I'm attempting to buy the next size up of some pants that recently-ish fit me, so I care less about comparison than whether I've incremented correctly, but good to know. (::sings the "Iiiii haaaate paaaants" song::)

[crystalpyramid]

In that case I agree with antimony that the 16 and not the 16W is more likely to fit. 16 is going to be cut the same way as the 12 and 14, 16W is going to be some random kind of fat-people shaped, and much bigger. As somebody who tends to live in the space between Misses' and Womens' sizes, and even at my fattest tend to be more Misses' shaped, I find this incredibly obnoxious.

16 is also totally the kind of size I would expect a store to Just Have, not a special plus size. I'm pleasantly surprised if they carry 18s but I'm kind of offended if they don't carry 16s. Especially if they tend to run kind of small. I've got some convertible pants from EMS that are (kind of small) 16Rs; I would expect REI to do at least as well.