Ladies' sizing out of whack...also, water deemed wet

After reading this article, I realize just how futile our whining about sizing can be.  Everyone knows the problem: standardized sizing is completely non-existent, and the cookie-cutter manufacturing industry has yet to come up with a solution to the not-so-cookie-cutter American female body.  This unpredictable model is the source of the problem.  Every body is different, and there is no cost effective way to actually navigate this problem.

That isn't where the problem stops. Mass manufacturing is outsourced (note: clothing manufacturing is among the top 10 dying industries), so any standardization would be impossible to adopt and almost as impossible to enforce.

Additionally, we have the "problem" of vanity sizing.  Ok, forcing a good chunk of the slimmer population into the negative sizes is definitely not a good thing.  However, vanity sizing came about because manufacturing standards could not keep up with the American waistline.  Yet, as with anything, manufacturing should and will cater to the average. If out of 10 women, one has a size 27" waist, one a 40" waist and 8 have a 34" inch waist, profits are not to be made catering to the outliers.

And yes, supermodels are outliers...which are held up as the "norm," at least according to the advertising industry.  Now we're starting to see the big, skewed, dysfunctional picture.

Now, what I do like about this article is it offers a solution: the full-body scan.  However, this doesn't solve the original problem.  It just solves the problem created by a problem.  The actual solution?  Well, that's more than slightly complicated.  We could go back to custom-made clothing, but there is no easy way to come back from the mass outsourcing of manufacturing cookie-cutter clothes.  The bottom line: there will never be an acceptable standard, and outliers will always be left in the dust (except supermodels, of course).  The good thing about the current system is that somewhere, at some store, there is a good chance that something will fit in a size that will not make you weep silently in a corner.