Pulse

Clothes confusion wears me out

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-28 07:55

My XL Beijing lifestyle dictates what I can buy off the peg

I'm not a science fiction geek, but whenever I see those futuristic inhabitants zipping around in their hydrogen-powered hovercrafts I'm overcome with a feeling of envy. I love those sleek, one-piece polymer suits they wear. Not so much the style - jumpsuits are notoriously difficult in public bathrooms - but the fact that everyone is wearing the same thing.

When I was young, I used to dream of going to a private school, the kind with the pleated skirts and clip-on ties. It wasn't the prestige or quality academics I longed for, I just didn't want to think of what to wear every day. And then there were my missteps like stripes on plaid, black socks with sandals and that T-shirt that read: "I'm with stupid." The arrow was pointing up.

Unlike a clotheshorse, I'm a clothes squid; that is, I like to camouflage less attractive parts of my body. At certain times of the month, I pile up enough free flowing pieces to resemble a homemade burqa. Clothes to me are solely functional; I shop at places like Dress 4 Less, She Barn and any store with "mart" on the end. But it's taken me until my 30s, amid fruitless searches of rack after rack of clothing, to realize that we are at the mercy of fashion designers and clothes buyers who dictate what's in the stores: two types of people who think a Diet Coke and a cigarette on the Champs-Elysees qualifies as lunch.

Eons ago, Yves St Laurent wowed the fashion world with his ethnically tinged maxi dresses. Starting at the top of the neck, they were earth-toned and dropped straight to the toes - pretty unsexy but hugely comfortable. The rage lasted a season, after that the only place I could find a similar dress was in an Amish community.

In the West, clothing manufacturers try to flatter our feminine egos by playing loose with sizes. Before they went from size 4 to 16. Now they start at zero, widening the range to fit in with our expanding waists and hips. So we can feasibly have a double cheeseburger, fries and a shake and still drop a size after lunch depending on the brand we buy.

Asian companies, on the other hand have no problem telling you you're fat. They categorize their sizes in accordance to life stages: "small" will fit a pre-pubescent female with flamingo-thin legs, "medium" is for high school graduates sporting hips unadulterated by childbirth, "large" will accommodate anyone on a 57th day of a 60-day fast, while XL, XXL and XXXL are for the rest of us; we who eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and the occasional double-scoop sundae at Coldstone Creamery.

There are disadvantages to being a man, of course; a shorter lifespan, higher rates of incarceration, premature well, anything. None of that, however, comes close to what women have to suffer: the bearer of inequity, the penultimate of pain, the ninth gate of purgatory. We even wear control garments. Like a rubber wet suit shrink-wrapped to our skin, we endure these garments that push, pull, tuck, lift, squeeze, smooth, compress and mold our bits .

While the Devil has many names, his more no-frills moniker is Allen Gant, also known as the inventor of pantyhose. Ask any man if he'd wear a piece of clothing that combined underpants and stockings and he'd laugh his boxers off. Allen on the other hand became a millionaire.

Clothes are not, as I sometimes accuse them of being, the root of all evil. And as much as a burlap sack is functional, it looks too much like something indie rockers or the homeless wear. Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden with nothing but fig leaves and fur to cover their nakedness. Our choices have grown thousandfold, and with that has come a lifetime of rummaging through the closet shrieking: "I have nothing to wear!" Hmm, maybe that jumpsuit doesn't sound so bad after all.

The author is a Canadian freelance writer based in Beijing. To comment, e-mail metrobeijing@chinadaily.com.cn. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of METRO.

(China Daily 04/28/2011)