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Sizing chaos

pudding.cool

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Re: Sizing chaos

#131
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience with womens clothing having pockets does not mean they are very practical for phones. Phones are heavy and they can drag pants or skirt/dress down if they are stretchier or don't have a tight waistband which is most of them. If the pocket goes too far down or is too loose or too big the phone ends up too far down and jiggles around which is quite annoying and uncomfortable. Or in items like jeans whe…

Even as a guy who wears pretty loose straight-cut jeans, having stuff in my pockets can look and feel weird. Especially my AirPods case. In jeans with slightly stretchy denim, the location of my phone is permanently etched into my jeans. I'd be a pickpocket's dream. When I had the unfortunate inclination to wear tight pants, anything in the pockets looked and felt quite bad.

If you think you can pull it off, I've become a strong proponent of blazers and sport coats. I call them "wearable purses for men".

For me, this is basically an evolution and refinement of what I guess I've always been trying to do. As a teen, I'd wear un- or partially-buttoned button-up shirts over my t-shirts. Later, zip hoodies as much of the year as I could get away with. I'd also be sad during this whole period when it'd get too warm and I couldn't get away with wearing a coat everywhere (and it got too warm for a hoodie, once I adopted those) and I'd have to go back to putting my stuff in my trouser pockets. That just sucks.

Now, I've gone to blazers and sport coats, which to me feel like a very similar idea but are wildly more practical[1] for most situations I find myself in, and most folks perceive them as looking a lot better, too.

I've found the heavier winter fabrics to be the easiest to pull off. Simple tweeds, or I've got this one really heavy but soft wool twill in grey-black that works great. Corduroy (there are wool corduroys, too!) covers fall really well, and can do for the cooler parts of spring, too.

Summer is trickier. Unlined Summer-weight wools can add effectively zero heat (and keep some of the sun off you!) but may look too formal, especially when nobody else is wearing a jacket of any kind. Really schlubby unstructured cotton, or a simple linen jacket can work without looking "too fancy", but they're a bit high-maintenance if you don't want them to look wrinkled to hell all the time. I haven't quite found what I'd call a perfect solution for me, here.

[1] Why are they more practical? A blazer or sport coat can usually dress pretty far up, and pretty far down, so has better situational range than a hoodie. I also find the pocket layout is just a ton better. My standard way to wear them is keys in left-hip, phone in right-hip, wallet in left-inner-breast. Generally, these leave tons of room in all three pockets concerned for cramming change or receipts or whatever, none of them are crowded. When traveling, I'll give a whole pocket to my passport, right-inner-breast if that one's big enough, or I might give that to my left hip if I don't need my keys (like when flying or taking a train). Sunglasses can go in the outer breast pocket. Hip pockets are usually big enough to temporarily cram leather or knit-wool gloves in, for the winter, when I need to take those off but don't have anywhere to put them, without overcrowding the pockets enough to cause a problem. I can double up my keys and a big ID/keycard in the left hip, when I need to go into the office, still not crammed tight or anything. The hip pockets are also great for those "pocket size" paperback books, and you can even fit stuff like Modern Library hardcovers in there as long as they're not super-thick volumes, especially the older editions that had smaller dimensions.

Re: Sizing chaos

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like a better angle would be educating people that 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks sugar for breakfast is not healthy. An even better angle is educating Starbucks to stop selling unhealthy garbage. The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. They have way more agency over what we consume than individuals do.

> The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. You know they have Starbucks in other countries without an obesity crisis? No one is forcing you or I to order a particular drink at Starbucks; they literally put the number of calories directly next to the menu item. The blame is 100% on the individuals making their own health decisions.

> The blame is 100% on the individuals making their own health decisions.

If you put a pile of junk food on the floor, your pet will eat it until they make themselves sick.

We are smarter than many animals and have more discipline. But we are still animals and do not have unlimited executive function. The people who architect the environment of incentives that surround us bear some amount of responsibility for the behavior those incentives create.

Denying that is denying that we are living beings subject to all of the same limitations as any other mortal animal. We are not spherical rational actors in a vacuum.

Re: Sizing chaos

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like a better angle would be educating people that 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks sugar for breakfast is not healthy. An even better angle is educating Starbucks to stop selling unhealthy garbage. The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. They have way more agency over what we consume than individuals do.

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Read my comment more carefully.

If a company put a giant a giant bollard in the middle of the interstate and someone hit it, are you saying that the company bears zero responsibility for that?

Re: Sizing chaos

#134
post #89

The issue is not the sizes, the issue is the obesity epidemic. According to CDC [1] the average woman in the US is 5'3" weighing 172lbs. That's not just overweight but rather first degree of obesity. I guess you could argue that sizes should catch up to the demands when half of your population is straight up fat but I feel like a better angle would be educating people that 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks sugar for break…

I'll point out a statistical hazard here. While CDC lists the average height and weight at 5'3" and 172 lbs, the medians appear to be 5'3" and 161 lbs. That's a BMI of 28 and is considered overweight (25-30), not obese. Although I'll mention BMI is a pretty rough measure to begin with.

Re: Sizing chaos

#135
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few fabrics can be fused together to make seams disappear, mostly your synthetics. Though technically wools could be felted together, but that would probably be extremely labor intensive.

why is it that fabrics can be made in a square shape but not e.g. a capless cylinder shape? I can knit clothes seamlessly, right?

They can be! The key phrase to search for is “tubular weaving”.

Re: Sizing chaos

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. You know they have Starbucks in other countries without an obesity crisis? No one is forcing you or I to order a particular drink at Starbucks; they literally put the number of calories directly next to the menu item. The blame is 100% on the individuals making their own health decisions.

> The blame is 100% on the individuals making their own health decisions. If you put a pile of junk food on the floor, your pet will eat it until they make themselves sick. We are smarter than many animals and have more discipline. But we are still animals and do not have unlimited executive function. The people who architect the environment of incentives that surround us bear some amount of responsibility for the be…

You can't control the incentives, you can only control your reactions to those incentives.

Re: Sizing chaos

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translating the confusing science speak, basically: Appearance self-esteem takes a hit when they don't fit in a size. They take it out on the clothes: "I hate their stuff, they suck." They buy more of other stuff to compensate for the hit, whether non-sized accessories (I am pretty) or book/tech (I am smart even if I don't fit). People confident in their appearance are immune to the effect, and simply think it's size…

I am genuinely curious as to which words in the cited are 'confusing science speak' in your view. Having read the article, I can't venture a guess without feeling condescending...non-conforming? Compensatory? Legitimately confused.

They use precise but indirect terminology e.g., "heightened level of appearance self-esteem" rather than "confident in their appearance".

Indirect phrasing e.g., "they respond more favorably to products that can help to repair their damaged appearance self-esteem" rather than something direct and easy to understand like "they feel bad that they don't fit, so they end up buying other things like makeup/jewelry to feel better about their appearance".

Re: Sizing chaos

#138
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Women's sizing is so dumb. They could just provide inches or cm like they do for the men, but for some reason (well for marketing reasons, as discussed extensively in the article), they use these random sizes and numbers that aren't consistent and change over time. Relevant: TIL that while male rowers are classified as "lightweight" or "heavyweight", larger female rowers are called "openweight" instead of "heavyweig…

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Re: Sizing chaos

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure everyone who cares about getting a good fit (and isn't simply trying the clothes on in person) is looking at measurements, which you can usually find for any half-decent vendor (though it may take some poking around their site). The best have it per-garment (or per-cut), less-good but usually still alright is having a guide to the measurements they base their sizing off of. Even guys can't really get…

Ironically, one area that both genders can have trouble with is crotch seam length, though typically on opposite sides of the garment — but in women’s clothing it’s often worse than men’s due to the spectrum of “extra high rise” to “extra low rise” that’s added to the mix in women’s clothing. Aligning with the hourglass-mostly point of the article, the most common is High Rise, which corresponds to the higher ‘restin…

Now that is an interesting dimension (ha, ha) of this I hadn't yet appreciated. I'm used, as a dude of fortunately-normalish proportions and skinny-enough (but not actually skinny) size, to only looking at a single measurement for rise (crotch to waist, measured on the front of the garment) and getting a really good idea of what I'll be dealing with, just from that. From your description I think I've understood the issue you're highlighting, and yeah, that'd be an annoying extra factor to deal with (and I'm sure it's really hard to get two rise measurements out of anybody, just about ever).

You've got me thinking back to a particular brand and style of (not at all fancy) jeans my wife used to love, that they discontinued, and she's never quite found another that works for her as well. From how she described it, in hindsight, I bet this measurement is the key thing she's not managing to nail on her attempts to find a replacement. Wish she still had a pair, I'd go measure front- and back-rise on them so we'd know what to look for!

Re: Sizing chaos

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some theories. Most fresh food in a generic U.S. supermarket has something like 10-25% of the nutrients per pound than it used to a hundred years ago, thanks to soil depletion, so each generation has to consume more pounds of food to get the same amount of nutrients. There’s been long-standing corruption in the FDA “food pyramid” and “recommended daily allowance” systems to bias the U.S. population from rec…

There is no source supporting your claim of nutrient decline in that magitude thanks to soil depletion. It's mostly due to modern crops that grow tall fast, and are thus mostly made up of water.

Some argue that it’s instead because we’ve promoted food strains that have more sugars and less nutrients, and I’m still studying that, so I have no position to offer about it yet. Brussels sprouts is a good example of doing this in a way that doesn’t damage the nutritional value, but the general U.S. avoidance of anything pungent or bitter is reflected in having bred out all of the ‘unattractive’ nutrients from our food strains. A good litmus test for this is to check for dandelion greens on the shelves; if present, the market likely sells a broad spectrum of produce that isn’t simply designed to be a sugar bomb; if absent, I’d be shocked if you found anything nutrient-dense at all.
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