pushing the sky

We have managed to uncover a huge clothing conspiracy which may explain why you no longer fit into that nice size M shirt, and are now guiltily standing at the counter buying a size L even though you really aren’t all that large.

Yessiree, there’s a bourgeois conspiracy to make the untailored clothes buying public feel guilted, fat and generally uninterested in doing anything to upset the supressed place of the proletarait. It is not the simple fact that fashion has deemed a “skinny fit” to be the standard; the very size has been downsized!

Evidence, you ask for? Dad picked up a shirt at the shops recently, and his established size standard – M – didn’t fit well enough, so he had to step up to a L. Now my Dad has maintained his body shape well enough that for him to change sizes could only mean that the sizes have changed, but Dad bought it anyway, blaming a small drop in physical activity along with the trend for “slim fit”. However! Today he got me to try a shirt from 1998 which is sized M – and it fit!

These days, a standard L size will not fit me any longer, but given that I know that I’ve hardly maintained anything that passes for a figure I reasonably assumed that, yes, I had gone up a size to an XL. And yet, this shirt from 8 years ago sized M, somehow manages to fit near enough to an XL’s sizing of today. An L size shirt strains against my shoulders and biceps, but this shirt fits comfortably! Allowing for 8 years of slight loosening, counterweighed by the fact that Dad observed the shirt has always been pretty loose on him, so it has been worn less often than others might have been, and also allowing for the fact that it may well have been a loose M in the first place, it still is irrefutable evidence that the size of shirts has decreased, not that we as a society and me as a person has grown more obese.

I suspect the blame for this can squarely lie either in two factors. Either clothing manufacturers want to flatter the bourgeois elite – possibly their very sons & daughters – with the oh-so-ideal shape that lets the now-smaller shirts cling tightly to pointless muscles – the aforementioned “slim fit” – and they’ve taken it to extremes by dropping whole sizes. Or – and this is possibly the controversial part of my theory – the sizing has changed from being measured on your average person to – now don’t sue me here – the average Chinese clothing factory worker, where definitions of small, medium, large and extra large are a whole category smaller – and who would deny that a improvished Chinese factory worker is going to be smaller & skinnier than your stock standard westerner?

Skinny fit indeed.

In my more idle moments, such as those occupying the many hours spent on public transport, I often daydream and speculate – some of which ends up here on this very blog when it happens to be something I deem intriguing – and one of my occasional random thoughts is: what am I going to call my kids?

I have, over the years, decided on my daughter’s name roughly 17 times, in my more idle moments, taking names from friends, celebrities, chance-met strangers, or even making them up in a hope of getting them to fit into whatever dreams of future partners i may have. But it was with some surprise that I noted myself thinking along these lines merely minutes in to a decently violent movie, in the middle of some decently violent opening scenes, that “Amelia”, a name shouted moments before, would be an altogether sweet and beautiful name by which to address my daughter. In front of me, a man turning from human to werewolf was loudly and rather messily decapitated.

Now, many people would think this a futile line of thought to walk. Not withstanding lack of imminent children to name, let alone life partner with whom to contemplate such a prospect, it would appear to be a most fruitless pursuit. One would, as society deems it, wait until said child is born, and then taking into account many factors, one would, with consultation, pluck a name from the veritable assortment available from the world over, and thus impart such name upon the child, thereby changing it from “the child” to something far more intimate. I think, however, many people fail to appreciate the value of a name, and underestimate the necessity to think ahead. I know through personal experience that a name that is by and large easy to say is vital; having to constantly explain that, no, my name is in no way related to a major religion’s central text, and that indeed, it should be pronounced roughly “Ka’rn”, but with a nuance of a supressed ‘a’, or maybe ‘u’, sound between the r and n, something that some people get right on first occasion and others fail to pick up for years on end; all in all, having a name which doesn’t need to be explained on first contact generally smooths social occasions and avoids potential embarrasment. It is not unknown for people to grow into names, which somehow defines them for life. You’d never catch a Randalph down at the footy on a Saturday night, for instance.

Clearly, I have digressed. This is, I must note, perhaps the 18 time – that I can recall – that I have settled on a name for my daughter. We shall see indeed if my mind changes in the future, as Amelia may join such names as Natasha, Rebecca, Honey, Radhika, or Aiko on the rejected list. It is such a pretty name though, allowing shorter forms like Amy or Lia, or even with my last name the decidedly tomboyish AJ. Versatile, I tell you.

I’ve only thought of my son’s name 3 times, however. My wife can name him.