Size deflation

This has absolutely nothing to do with the post, but the picture is soooo cute, how can I resist? Ollie in his first Halloween costume

Yesterday Rob and I had a near-perfect day. We spent a fun day eating out, shopping, taking the dogs to the beach and eating out again. I had a chance to do a little clothes shopping at the Newbury Park Loehmanns, which is closing, sadly, and I had the wonderful experience of realizing that size 10 pants are too loose. I've outgrown all of my pants, which are starting to look clown-like, and I wanted to find a couple of pairs of pants to take me through the last leg of my weight loss.

What I'm finding so weird is that womens' clothings sizes have changed since the last time I was in the neighborhood. When I was a teen, I generally wore a size 10, which was good for my 5'9" frame. Size 10s were more or less cut to accommodate a 37-38-inch butt. These days, according to the sizing charts a size 10 accommodates a 40-41 inch butt. They've also added size 0 and 00, which would be necessary to take the place of the slots formerly occupied by 2s and 4s. So basically my 8 is an old 12, the 10 is a 14, 12 are 16s and 14s are 18s. What's weird is that because men's pants are based on inches, and they haven't changed last I checked -- you won't be able to take your size 8 butt and stuff it into 28-inch jeans. The old rule of thumb was that a 30 waist approximated a size 10. No more, I guess.

How odd. Have we gotten so fat, that clothing manufacturers have had to adjust their sizing charts to make us feel better? Women's clothing manufacturer Chico's has taken the entire concept even further, having plus sizes labeled 1, 2, and 3 with half-step increments. And then there's the practice of adding a W to the size, so you have a size 12W, which is what? A delusional 16?

Sadly, unless I switch to the metric system, the bathroom scale isn't enabling me, so the number remains, while ever-smaller, still big enough to keep me working. Until then my pants size is an 8. Wooo! Woooo! Next step: nudging the scale into the "normal" BMI range ...