Greetings from the southern coast of Maine! It’s a foggy morning, but I’m hopeful it will burn off and be a beautiful day by the sea. Yesterday was pretty rainy and gloomy, too, so my friend and I did what you usually do when it’s raining and you’re on vacation – we went shopping!
Looking over at Short Sands Beach through the fog.
The outlets in Kittery are just a few miles down the road, and I love wandering around the massive Kittery Trading Post. A lot of their stuff is expensive, but you can usually find some good Maine clothing. This year, I’m in the market for a zip-up hoodie. I have a bunch of pullover Maine hoodies, but they are super thick and bulky. Sure, those can be cozy, but I don’t always want to feel (and look) like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
Imagine my surprise, then, when so many of the cute zip-up hoodies were just too narrow to fit me. The bulky pull-overs fit fine, but the slimmer fit, thinner material, zip-up versions were apparently all made for women who do not have hips.
This was a trend I noticed with a lot of the women’s clothing in the store, not just sweatshirts. So, my deep, insightful question of the day is: What’s up with that? Why are so many women’s clothing manufacturers making their stuff so narrow?
The conspiracy theorist in me naturally assumes they are in cahoots with the diet industry. Think about it: If clothes get smaller and/or narrower, we’re going to naturally assume that it’s our bodies getting bigger and/or wider, and we’re going to panic and rush straight into the arms of Jennie Craig and Weight Watchers. We’ll lose a bunch of weight, buy smaller clothes… and then we’ll eventually gain the weight back and have to either dig out our old big clothes, or (as the industry hopes) buy new ones.
Well, to heck with that. While I’m here, I’m going to keep eating lobster until I burst, and I’m going to enjoy all the other amazing things there are to eat. That’s what Maine vacations are for! And I’ll keep holding out for zip-up hoodie that fits these hips, just as they are.
