What Is Midsize Fashion? And Why Is Everyone So Confused?
Courtesy of subjects.
In this reported op-ed, associate editor Aiyana Ishmael addresses the internet's misunderstanding of what midsize fashion is and how it directly impacts the influencers in the space.
Jade Fiona has 635,000 followers on Instagram. The fashion influencer often posts outfit inspiration reels on the app, with the caption “midsize OOTD” (outfit of the day) across the center of the screen. Fiona, whose reels can get over two million views, is continually met with an outpour of comments in response to her niche. “You’re not midsize girl. Stop it.” “Midsize, yeah, sure.” “Midsize is like 8-10, you’re like a 12-14.”
“A size eight is firmly in the straight, standard clothing size category — commonly referenced as ‘misses,’” retail expert LaNita Humphrey tells Teen Vogue.
TikTok sits as one of the main harbingers of this discourse, mostly because, like many things on the internet, we’re playing a losing game of telephone. Whether it be the origins of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) being frequently mislabeled as “Gen Z slang” or the rampant amount of misinformation being passed off as facts across several mediums, we’ve seen many niches, like midsize fashion, be co-opted and inadvertently used to shame those who are supposed to be able to find asylum in those same spaces.
“A lot of people don't understand it. A lot of people are like, ‘You're either skinny or you're fat,’” Fiona tells Teen Vogue. Fiona expects the vitriol. “It was really hard to have those comments, people telling you what you are, what your body is, what size you are,” she says.
High fashion shapes the retail industry in many ways, from the trend trickle-down system to the way everyday people view their bodies. Infamously, models have set the standard, and designers' use of sizes zero, two, and four as “sample size” has misconstrued our understanding of what this means. This leaning scale then affected the ways in which we see plus-size models who also walk down the runway. In high fashion, models who wear sizes eight, ten, and twelve were all regarded as plus-size models, which ultimately contributed to the confusion about what midsize is. When the people controlling our trend cycle set incredibly skewed standards, that logic of body types for regular people is also affected.
Because of the many discrepancies women shoppers face when it comes to fluctuating sizing, many straight-size (US 0-8) shoppers who’ve been conditioned to see their realistic bodies as inadequate began to categorize themselves in the midsize section.
“People look at bodies and sizes in different ways,” Fiona continues. “People carry weight and sizes differently. I don't view plus-size as something that's negative. So if someone wants to look at me and say ‘You’re plus-size,’ compared to what they know, what they're surrounded by, and what they're taught, it doesn't affect me.” Fiona says that the worst part of all the attacks online is the people believing she’s ashamed of being referred to as plus-size simply because she uses the term midsize in her content.
She isn’t alone in this phenomenon. The midsize range is an often misunderstood intersection in retail sizing that has long existed as an inscrutable subsidiary. Its general knowledge from the masses varies from person to person — and from body to body. According to a 2016 study in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, the average clothing size for American women is between a size 16 and 18. Notably, a size 16 is where plus-sizing starts. Many high-fashion and boutique brands, when diving into their sizing, fall at a size 12 on the highest end of their clothing. With the world so focused on our bodies, it is often easy to let our visual perception determine what we know to be true. It’s even easier when the understanding of body makeup and weight distribution isn’t something taught throughout the primary education system.
“I can be a size 12 in one brand, a 16 in one, and an eight in another,” Fiona says. “So shopping is something I have to mentally prepare myself for, especially if I'm going in-person into the mall. I can go into a store where the highest they go up to is an extra large, and I’m unable to fit into the extra large, but then if I were to go into an inclusive store, like a Torrid, there have been times where the smallest size doesn’t fit either.”
The midsize discourse and confusion reached a fever pitch on TikTok, mostly like a grapevine winding its way through comments, replies, and into the ears of straight-sized people who’ve often felt like clothes didn’t fit them correctly. Fashion and shopping, although deemed frivolous by many, is a rather emotional journey. We’re constantly being sold ideals and dream boards of who is deserving to wear certain items and what bodies meet the standards. And it does not help that many young women are taught to believe clothes are something we should work to fit into when it should be the other way around.
Because of the many discrepancies women shoppers face when it comes to fluctuating sizing, many straight-size (US 0-8) shoppers who’ve been conditioned to see their realistic bodies as inadequate began to categorize themselves in the midsize section. It soon became that if you aren’t a “perfect” size six with a flat stomach and lean thighs, then you’re no longer reaching the “standard.” It’s now diluted the understanding of what midsize is, which draws on the larger struggles women face with body image issues.
Midsize doesn’t look one way or another. Midsize is a measurement, a range in which a group of shoppers fluctuate between a galore of options and none at all.
While wearing a size eight exists on the border of midsize, the subsection's origins began because of its lack of “cushion.” If you wear a size four, six, or eight across most brands, when something doesn't fit, you can size up or down in either direction at most retail stores. Actual midsize shoppers float among the fringes of the scarce amount of larger sizes in most stores. Fiona noted that whenever she is in stores, the larger sizes she can fit into are never in stock. “It’s always the size 2s and 4s that are still on the rack,” she says.
While midsize shoppers do not face the glaring issues plus-size women do — having little to no representation at all — if they do not fit into the largest straight size (usually an XL, XXL, or transferrable a women’s US12), then they are stuck without an option either. There is no sizing up when most straight-sized clothing brands have their cutoff at a size 12. Hence the making of mid-sizing: those who were just above the straight sizes and sometimes right below the beginnings of plus-sizes.
Midsize doesn’t look one way or another. Midsize is a measurement, a range in which a group of shoppers fluctuate between a galore of options and none at all. For many, like Fiona and creator Atiya, focusing on this niche began as a way to build community and offer style inspiration. But like the several other ways in which we choose to stifle each other, this community has succumbed to another arbitrary reimagination, where smaller bodies are being centered and made the face of a movement.
This shift comes from the constant goalpost transference done to women. When relatively thin bodies are ostracized, they’ll take shelter in the next camp over, forming a community. But what goes unnoticed is the sartorial ousting of the communities originally placed in these categories. Even if done without malice, by co-opting a space that isn’t yours to own, you’re unintentionally harming the people who should actually be serving as representation. Because of this reinterpretation of sizing, many TikTok and Instagram commenters continually tell Fiona that “midsize is a size medium” and that she isn’t a medium, so she mustn’t be midsize.
Atiya is another midsize fashion and lifestyle creator who recently began posting outfit videos for her followers. While she was never a huge fashion lover, she understood the struggles she faced as a midsize shopper and wanted to provide style inspiration to her thousands of followers.
“For me, like being a content creator, I don't even shop in stores anymore where my size is the cap,” she says. “I know I have an audience that ranges from midsize to plus-size. I want to be able to cater to everybody in my audience. Shopping in stores is so difficult because I have to literally be mentally prepared to go in because some things may not fit me, and that is always a blow to my confidence.”
Something both Atiya and Fiona want to see amongst retailers is a better-blended shopping experience where no one is left out. “I really do appreciate brands who don't just stop at a size 12 and then do a completely different style range for plus sizes filled with completely different clothes that aren't even cute most of the time,” Fiona says. There has always been a very stark cutoff between straight-sized clothing and plus-size clothing over the years. With the majority of American women existing in the middle and plus-size range, the lack of breadth and consideration put into the size 10s and upward feel dismissive to a dominant population and their shopping powers.
But beyond the shopping struggles, Fiona hopes the internet will loosen the harness around these inescapable rules and requirements meant to box each other in. In a generation deeply devoted to trends and cores, the constant hyperfixation on labels — and who is allowed to own them — is something she hopes will die out soon.
“I would love to see a little bit more openness and understanding,” she says. “I want people to not be so fast to judge people. I would really like to see the obsession with labels eventually shy away because it's really trapping people in this toxic mindset of what they should be, what they want to be categorized as, and what they're scared of being called.”
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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