A Viral Facebook Post Just Confirmed Our Thoughts About Women’s Clothing Sizes

They say no two pairs of jeans are exactly the same, which is why shopping can often be more of a headache than a relaxing experience. That’s why Deena Shoemaker, a youth mentor from Wichita, Kansas, has “a bone to pick” with clothing makers over obscure sizing practices. In a now-viral Facebook post, she calls out the ridiculousness of it all, reports BuzzFeed.

Shoemaker found inspiration for her post after scouring her closet for clothes to donate to a family whose house burned down. She quickly realized that her closet wasn’t exactly one-size-fits-Shoemaker. Her post is accompanied by a photo of her wearing pants of different sizes, showing that they all have a similar fit. She wrote, “As I was going through my clothes tonight I started to notice how dramatically different the size of all my pants were. And I have a real problem with the fact that my size 5 pants fit me THE EXACT SAME WAY that my size 12 pants do.”

She implies that when stores change sizes to make them bigger, it can morph into numerous self-esteem issues. Shoemaker called out Photoshop and the fallacy of retouching models: “At this point it’s a pretty universally known truth that you’re lying to us and those aren’t accurate portrayals of the human body.” She continued, “But when you resize a girl’s pants from a 9 to a 16 and label it “plus size,” how am I supposed to fight that? Photo manipulation is one thing but how do you expect me to convince her that the number printed inside her clothes is a lie too?”

Shoemaker encouraged her mentees not to focus on the number on their clothes: “Your size doesn’t determine your beauty; your life does.”

[BuzzFeed]