we have all cried in a fitting room

It’s a universal truth that we have all cried in a fitting room.

I mean, why wouldn’t we? The fitting room is no haven. It’s a closed, claustrophobic room with the most horrible lighting one has ever seen, a curtain that never closes all the way, and the mirror that should belong in a fun house.

Whether it has been trying on jeans—God, the jeans—or bathing suits, or tops, we’ve all experienced that silent suffocation in the fitting room.

You can have a great relationship with your body and still have a lingering negative thought when you look in the mirror.

It’s the one place where you are supposed to look at your whole self and see how a piece of clothing fits—or doesn’t fit.

It’s the place where our insecurities seem impossible to ignore.

It’s not news that women face enormous expectations from society. These expectations are so overwhelming that not even the most powerful women can escape them. How a woman should look, however, is always at the top of the list.

It starts at a young age, especially when girls go through puberty. This is a difficult time—not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. I would say it’s almost like an out-of-body experience: you don’t know what’s happening to your body, yet you can’t do anything about it.

It’s the first time you start noticing every little thing about your body, and that takes a toll.

Why am I taller than boys? Are my thighs supposed to be this big? Should my boobs be growing this fast? Am I gaining weight?

What’s worse is that these thoughts continue to linger long after puberty. They’re there in your teens, your 20s, during pregnancy, motherhood, menopause, and older age.

In other words, a lifetime.

We’re expected to always look “perfect,” and the version of “perfect” we are told to strive for is never achievable because it is constantly changing.

However, the one idea that continues to prevail through every changing beauty standard is thinness.

But the fitting room isn't just exposing our insecurities—it is also exposing the limitations of a sizing system that was never designed to accommodate the full range of women's bodies.

It was during the 1940s that standardized sizing for women began to take shape. As more women moved to rural areas and had limited access to tailors, clothing manufacturers began producing mail-order catalogs. The problem, however, was that sizing varied from one manufacturer to another, resulting in a high number of returns.

This cost manufacturers roughly $10 million a year, prompting the government to step in and create a standardized sizing system.

The reason standardized sizing was doomed from the beginning was that the 15,000 women measured for the project were predominantly white and from lower-income backgrounds.

The women in the study were already smaller than the average American woman and represented only one segment of the population. As a result, the data collected did not accurately reflect the national average.

So if the system was built on deeply flawed data, why are we still expected to fit ourselves into it?

Companies and manufacturers would rather have us fit into their sizes than adjust their sizes to fit us.

We are simply expected to accept what we are given.

Yet instead of questioning the system, women have spent decades being told to change themselves to fit it.

I did not experience the diet culture of the ’90s and early 2000s, but I have seen the magazine articles from that era, and they were nothing short of cruel and damaging to women.

These tabloids told women to eat fewer than 1,000 calories a day, avoid carbs, and survive on salads—because why would you want to eat a sandwich? They also featured celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and called them overweight—despite them being visibly thin, healthy young women.

These messages produced long-lasting effects, contributing to eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and low self-esteem.

The constant noise—not only from magazines, but from movies, television, news, and social media—is overwhelming. We absorb those messages whether we realize it or not, and they stay with us for years.

Even now, the ultimate goal is still to be as thin as possible.

This time, however, the method is not about doing endless cardio or eating as little as you can—it’s about taking GLP-1 medications.

These medications have been life-changing for many people and can be an effective tool for managing obesity, insulin resistance, and other health conditions. The problem is not the medication itself. The problem is the pressure that makes women feel like they need it in order to be accepted.

We are constantly being told that a smaller body is a better body—that if we could just fit into a smaller size, we would finally feel confident, successful, or worthy.

It’s an endless cycle: believing that the smallest version of ourselves will be the best version of ourselves.

But the best version of ourselves has never been the smallest one. It’s the one that takes care of itself.

The goal should never be to make ourselves smaller simply for the sake of fitting into a certain size.

The goal should be to feel healthy, strong, and capable in our own bodies.

Ever since I started going to the gym and lifting weights, I’ve felt more connected to my body than ever before. I’ve gained respect for my body, for the things it can do, and for what healthy looks like on me.

What I’ve gained from it is far more valuable than a number on a scale. I feel stronger. I have more energy. I feel more confident in what my body can do rather than how it looks.

That shift in perspective has made all the difference. When the focus becomes health instead of appearance, it becomes easier to appreciate your body for what it does for you rather than criticize it for what it isn’t.

The problem is that so many of us are taught the opposite.

This belief that we must change our bodies to be accepted is the real problem.

Something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is just how much genetics and hormones influence our bodies. When we’re young, we often believe we can change parts of ourselves that are completely outside of our control, and we beat ourselves up when we can’t.

It’s easy to nitpick every little detail about ourselves that we don’t like.

What I often think about is the way we react when we hear our moms, sisters, and friends talk about themselves in a negative light.

We hype them up, compliment them endlessly, and tell them they’re beautiful—because it’s true. We think the world of them.

Why is it so difficult for us to do the same for ourselves?

The next time you’re standing in a fitting room and feel those negative thoughts creeping in, give yourself a little grace.

Think about the incredible life you have. Think about the friends who support you, the career you’ve built, your accomplishments, and your aspirations.

Our bodies are the least interesting thing about ourselves.

This post was inspired by Katie Sturino’s novel Sunny Side Up. Through the lens of a successful woman, the novel explores body image, the pursuit of self-love, and the psychological and social effects of society’s expectations surrounding women’s bodies.

Thank you to Celadon Books for gifting me a copy of the book <3

Sunny Side Up by Katie Sturino is available now in paperback!

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sources

the history of standardized sizing:

https://time.com/3532014/women-clothing-sizes-history/

cover photo:

@katyaavinaa on pinterest