In Between Plus Size and Sample Size, There Are Millions of Women

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Vaccarini lives in that delightful valley between typical straight sizes and typical plus sizes, otherwise known as the in-between sizes. The average American woman has long been thought to be a size 14 (it’s actually probably a little higher now) which lands right in that weird spot of nearly sizing out of standard retailers, which typically run from sizes 0 to 12 (or 8 to 10 for high-end retailers), but not quite sizing into plus-size retailers, which typically start at a size 16. The in-betweeners live in a world occupied by many but represented by few, especially when it comes to fashion advertising and media depiction.

"For people who were like me who are kind of in between plus sizes and standard sizes, it’s hard to navigate the fashion industry because people want to categorize you as plus-size," says Vaccarini, who’s a size 14. When companies approached her for collaborations, they were more often than not plus-size brands.

"I do label myself as plus size even though I am more in between because I guess the straight-size blogging industry has a certain image," she explains. "When people see me on the street, it’s like ‘Oh, that’s a curvy fat girl, she’s obviously not someone who would be a standard-size blogger.’ They would put me more in the category of being plus size, so I get a lot more plus-size pitches from companies."

Franziska Hasselhof, a medical student who runs a personal style blog on the side, never advertised herself as a blogger for in-between sizes but found herself getting linked regularly on Reddit threads when people were searching for style bloggers who didn't have model-sized dimensions.

On the one hand, Hasselhof says, it was great to get that recognition. "On the other hand, I’ll run across stuff that’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m so happy to find a girl who’s not stick skinny who can still look good,’" she says. "That’s almost a backhanded compliment, like, thank you for saying that I’m able to dress my body."

Last October, Hasselhof wrote a post addressing the way she had come to be viewed as a popular average-size style blogger. It has been one of Hasselhof’s best-performing posts to date, and initially drew about 200 comments from readers.

Franziska Hasslehof of Franish. Photo: Franziska Hasslehof

"I've never campaigned to be the poster girl for the larger average-sized girl, but somehow I have become the one that is recommended that way across the internet," Hasselhof wrote. "And you know, I feel like I have a certain responsibility to show that you can dress nice when you aren't sample sized. It's something I've been working on for years, and still need to work on. I feel a responsibility to find better fitting clothes, to find a way to layer without adding bulk, to show that the average sized girl wearing her average mall clothes can still look nice for her average middle America life. Not ‘nice, despite being large,’ just ‘nice.’"

The blurred lines get even messier on larger stages. When model Robyn Lawley appeared in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition as a 2015 Rookie, it was heralded as the first time a plus-size woman had been featured in the magazine. Lawley wore a size 12 at the time. "It's ludicrous to call me plus size and I've stated that publicly pretty much every step of the way," Lawley wrote on Facebook after the magazine came out. Even Ashley Graham, who’s one of the most recognizable models in plus-size campaigns and who covered Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition in 2016, is on the very small end of the plus-size range.

"Whether based on the predictably awful Internet comments about Graham’s size or on the massive helpings of liberal praise currently being heaped on the magazine, one might think that Graham is an astonishingly large woman and that Sports Illustrated is being exceptionally brave by featuring her," Samantha Allen wrote for The Daily Beast when Graham first appeared in SI via a SwimsuitsForAll ad in 2015. "She’s not and they’re not."

This past spring, a special edition of Glamour, focused on plus size fashion and published in partnership with Lane Bryant, featured Ashley Graham on the cover and teased Amy Schumer’s name in a tagline, along with Adele, Melissa McCarthy, and Graham. Schumer was quick to call out the miscategorization.

"Plus size is considered size 16 in America," Schumer posted on Instagram after the issue came out. "I go between a size 6 and an 8. @glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn't feel right to me. Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size? What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool."

"People believe that, because you have a larger woman in Sports Illustrated or a plus-size model in Glamour, that things are getting much better, when they’re actually not," Michael Bronski, a professor in Harvard’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, told the Boston Globe. "These thought patterns around beauty are so deep that they aren’t being fixed by cosmetic changes. It’s such a hegemonic, larger-scale, cultural issue, and I’m not sure what changes will make a difference."

A month after her Glamour mention, Schumer debuted a sketch on her show, Inside Amy Schumer, that took the act of clothes shopping to task. When she tried to get a shirt in a size 12, she was banned to a faraway field reserved for shoppers "in your situation." Lena Dunham met her there and Schumer ended up buying a tarp instead of a shirt.

The warped definition of straight sizes and plus sizes — and the rigidness with which every body must fall into one of the two categories — is especially stark in Hollywood, where diversity in size is not common on-screen. Shows have publicly poked fun at the ridiculousness of it: in the first episode of the second season of 30 Rock, Jack Donahue delivers unsolicited advice on Jenna Maroney’s recent weight gain: "She needs to lose 30 pounds or gain 60. Anything in between has no place in television."

It’s as if in-betweeners are a foreign species that can’t be properly categorized, and therefore are easier to ignore or, if there must be a label, label incorrectly. In her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy Kaling describes the headache like this:

"Since I am not model-skinny, but also not super-fat and fabulously owning my hugeness, I fall into that nebulous, ‘Normal American Woman Size’ that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I'm a size 8 (this week, anyway). Many stylists hate that size because, I think, to them, I lack the self-discipline to be an aesthetic, or the sassy confidence to be a total fatty hedonist. They're like, ‘Pick a lane.'"

Salvador Perez, a costume designer who’s worked on all four seasons of The Mindy Project, remembers going door to door trying to buy clothes for Kaling to fit her fashion-forward character in the first season, only to find most stores don’t stock above a size 10 in the clothes that he wanted to buy.

Mindy Kaling with her stylist, Salvador Perez. Photo: Tiffany Rose/Getty

"I’ve never had to dress an actress who was that size and it was eye-opening to me how little there was out there to buy," Perez says. "So, I’m very heavily reliant on Internet shopping, which gives you more options." Perez estimates that about 80% of what he buys for Kaling comes from online shopping, and the landscape hasn’t changed in the four years that he’s been working on the show.

On the marketing end, too, it’s nearly impossible to shop straight-size or plus-size retailers and see a diversity of size in their ad images. Just because a straight-size retailer stocks 0/2 to 10/12 doesn’t mean that the marketing reflects that. According to WGSN’s retail editor, Sidney Morgan-Petro, it would be good business for retailers to be more size-inclusive.

"Retailers would be wise to develop a marketing strategy that embraces and empowers women of size, effectively establishing a culture of acceptance that will translate into bigger spends," Morgan-Petro explains in an email. "I read a quote that fuller-figured women often spend less on purchases with the assumption that they will be losing the weight soon — an attitude set into motion by an industry that sets an unrealistic standard for size. It makes sense to use marketing to remove this stigma, and to tell women that the size you are isn't something that needs to be negotiated, that it's fine to just be you."

ModCloth models in a range of sizes. Photo: ModCloth

As Morgan-Petro points out, Aerie is a good example of a mall retailer that has adopted a more inclusive marketing approach (banning Photoshop in ads) and is raking in higher sales from that new direction. In 2015, the UK-based University of Kent published three separate studies that suggested women might be more likely to shop retailers that advertise clothing on models with regular, average-size proportions. And this year, ModCloth is leading a charge petitioning Congress for a higher standard of truth in advertising, with the intent to crack down on over-photoshopped models in fashion ads.

For now, fashion advertising at straight-size retailers still largely promotes only sample-size models. Hasselhof, the style blogger, knows that the advertising doesn’t line up with retailers’ average customers, especially at the mall, but says when it comes down to the actual clothing, malls are doing okay serving her demographic. "For the average size girl, who’s living the average life, who has to go to work or is raising their children or going to school, I think the [mall] stores are doing a pretty good job of — maybe not representing us in ads — but giving us clothing options," she notes.

Vaccarini, a frequent T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, and Old Navy shopper, typically doesn’t have a problem finding things that work, but says the fact that in-betweeners have a label is a little unfortunate in the first place. "It’s interesting because, really, what are you in between?" Vaccarini asks. "As for the actual sizes, if the retail industry made sense, there really wouldn’t be an in between."

Models for Universal Standard. Photo: Universal Standard

To a degree, there are retailers that are trying to swim against the tide and stop separating product as straight size and plus size, but rather, just carry a full range of sizes. ModCloth doesn’t separate its clothing into straight and plus-size categories, which co-founder Susan Gregg Koger says has gone over really well especially in ModCloth’s brick-and-mortar pop up shops.

"For me, the ‘aha’ moment was being in our pop-up in San Francisco and seeing someone come in who was new to the brand and asking if there was anything available in plus sizes, and being able to tell them, ‘Oh, the entire store is available in a full range of sizes," says Koger, who then initiated the idea to get rid of ModCloth’s plus-size category online as well. The San Francisco pop-up was originally scheduled to last for three weeks but ended up staying open for almost nine months, and there are plans to roll out more pop-ups across the US this summer.

When JCPenney launched its newest line of apparel in April, it purposefully made sure to cater to women who fall in that in between size range. "JCPenney’s size ranges are fairly comprehensive," says company spokesperson Christina Voss. "For women, we offer missy, tall, petite, plus and juniors plus. But, we know that when we offer plus sizes starting at 0x and 14w, we are better positioned to serve the woman who is in between missy and plus sizing. This is especially true in juniors, where her body is still developing and growing in height. Our juniors plus brands and our modern contemporary plus size collections, including our newest brand Boutique+, begin with these smaller sizes to accommodate women who are ‘in-between’ but are still seeking trendier looks."

Universal Standard, a minimalist online shop that launched last year and stocks sizes 10-28, purposefully blurred the line on their size range to carry both plus sizes and some straight sizes.

Models for Universal Standard. Photo: Universal Standard

"We wanted to do two things," says co-founder Alexandra Waldman. "First of all, we wanted to address the biggest problem here which is the lack of options for women of larger sizes, and also, we wanted to allow ourselves to keep a foot in the straight size world to show that there is no style segregation between the larger sizes and the smaller sizes in terms of capital-F fashion, and there shouldn’t be."

Even though Universal Standard only stocks a small range of straight sizes, Waldman says that the product has been selling well and she’s received requests from people asking if they’d stock one more size down to accommodate more customers.

When asked whether they would expand their range, Waldman was open to the possibility. "I really don’t see why not and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be a goal for everyone," she says. "I’ve never understood the segregation. There’s clothing for big people and clothing for small people. Why can’t there just be clothing?"

Correction: In a previous version of this story, Sidney Morgan-Petro attributed a quote to blogger Sarah Conley. The quote she referenced was from Eloquii CEO Mariah Chase.