Many of you have heard me rant before about the situation regarding sizes in Korea — how everything in the stores runs from size -2 to 2. Maybe 4s if you’re lucky. If you lopped off my breasts, and I was my absolute thinnest, I could maybe fit into a 10. It’s the bone structure, babe, and I generally have to buy 12s, which do not exist here, unless you’re buying ‘grandmother’ clothes. It’s called an XXL, you have to buy them specially off the Internet, they’re the cheapest looking things you can find, and they assume if you’re that size, you have no waist.

 

Okay, so I get it. That’s the norm they cater to in their market. The problem is, though, the lack of size choice is affecting more than us foreigners with the big skeletons and muscle tone (comparatively). The Korean diet is changing – before, the diet was based on rice and vegetables with small portions of meat. In the last 20 years, however, the increased prosperity in the country meant meat was more affordable, and Western food became more available and popular. So now the meat, dairy and bread that makes up the muscular (again, comparatively) structure of Westerners is appearing on the current crop of junior high and high school students – especially noticeable on the girls, who have curves!

 

It’s going to be a huge problem for the fashion industry. I already hear the complaints from the freshmen girls I teach that they can’t buy clothes in a size 6. I know it’s a boon for the diet/exercise industry as these girls fight to get the fashionable “S” figure that they will probably never achieve again because their bodies developed differently from their mothers’.

 

But I’ve given up being down on the Koreans. America, I’ve discovered, is not handling the size issue much better – one designer line’s size 10 is another’s 6 or 12, and websites that sell from various designers like Bluefly, Amazon, Macy’s or Windsor (etc.)  need their own special charts for figuring out what size is going to fit you. And if you’re hard to fit, be prepared to send something back (not an option for me, which explains why I’m one of the last holdouts against Internet shopping).

 

I didn’t realize EXACTLY how hard I was to fit until I popped onto a BMI (Body Mass Index) site on the Internet. The formula for configuring BMI is different for Asians and Americans. When I register for a yoga class here they plug in my numbers and gasp, “Oh, you’re so obese! You need to lose 50 pounds.” That might be possible if you’re talking about me losing one of my kids, but not so much my weight. So I thought, “Let’s see what my REAL BMI is.”

 

I plug in my height, weight and measurements, being totally honest. I expect a not great, but not unreasonable number to pop up. What do I get instead? “You have not entered your measurements correctly. Try measuring your waist again and re-enter.” Apparently, even by American standards, my body defies physical possibility.

 

Sigh. I guess I’m doomed to a lifetime of trying absolutely everything on before I purchase it. Unless you know of a shop that sells short-waisted petite sizes for hourglass figures?

 

Don’t let anyone tell you size doesn’t matter.