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

[allectofromlj]

Women's/Plus sizes (branded differently in different stores, natch) tend to be curvier than their non-plus counterparts, so it depends on your hip/butt to waist ratio.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

God, I don't even know. I hate pants. Why are pants.

[allectofromlj]

Is there a macy's near you? The one in NYC has a really good plus-sized collection, including work, dress, and sportswear. If not, I'd try another department store. Even if you don't want to buy from them, it helps for getting a gauge on what size you need.

If you strictly want to order on-line, a lot of sites now will tell you the actual measurements that go with each size.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hm, maybe I'll try that sometime, I think I know of a Macy's. I've never been able to measure myself and get numbers that made sense - I tried once but it was like, you should be wearing size 18 pants or something, and I think at that point I was wearing 14s, and I gave up. I love my body but jesus christ do I hate obtaining clothes to put on it, I really wish I could stay a consistent size.

[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::)

[antimony.livejournal.com]

Huh, I've almost always been able to find 16s at REI. If they've stopped that I will be cranky at them too. (The fact that their women's stuff keeps getting more fashion-y and less technical drives me up a wall; the men's stuff hasn't gone nearly as much in that direction.) Only their house brand 16s have a chance of fitting me; I really am an 18, and athletic gear often goes the reverse direction and makes an XL basically a size 12.

If the 14 was just a bit too small and you wanted one size up, get the 16. 16W are curvier and often in many brands a LOT bigger, even if they're supposed to be around the same size but curvier. (Don't get me started on brands where 1X is larger than XXL, when they have the same object in straight and plus sizes.)

I have to order all my cycling gear; it kind of bites. Well, I've bought a few men's pieces, because non-plus-size-specializing brands often go up to large sizes for men's stuff and it's sometimes even in stores.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I didn't look exhaustively, and the person I asked did say something like "you might possibly be able to find some around" in addition to suggesting I look online, which I took at the time as a sort of soft no, but maybe there really were some lurking somewhere, who even knows.

Why is 16W a lot bigger than 16, they're the same fricking number, who comes up with this stuff.

[antimony.livejournal.com]

They're two different series of sizes -- technically you can make all of the sizes in either Misses' or Women's, the difference is supposed to be in the curviness, and almost no one makes Women's sizes below 16 or Misses' above 18. And, well, there's so much loosey-goosey in sizing. (Even in men's, where the numbers are ostensibly inches somewhere on the garment.) But it may also be that I find the jump larger than it really is because of what bits of me are usually the limiting factor.

The brand of cycling jerseys where the 1X is a bit bigger all around than the XXL (they make some items in both "standard" and "plus sizing", so you have S/M/L/XL/XXL in the "standard" and 1X/2X/3X in "plus" but they're supposedly the same item), though, I continue to boggle at. (And continue to buy their stuff as both the XXL and the 1X mostly fit me pretty well.)

[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.

[stowaway-geek.livejournal.com]

I'm also annoyed at pants of mine that no longer fit.