Slim pickings

-Yes, it's frustrating that women's clothing sizes are meaningless, and that no woman today 'is' a particular size. There's a simple answer to this, and it's not radiation: start embracing styles that are not form-specific. As in, until we return to an age of made-to-measure, there's really no point trying on a million pairs of jeans, only to find the one that looks least awful, when dress plus belt fits.

In the comments to the recent NYT story on this, the complaints about vanity sizing read as opportunities for women to announce that they've been 5'9" and four pounds (or close - the number of not-short sub-100-lb NYT commenters is astounding) since high school. "The smallest 'pencil skirt' I could find at J. Crew was large enough to clothe a farm animal," one woman laments. Aside from the mental gymnastics it takes to figure out how a goat of any size would fit into a pencil skirt, that's... a nice image. And the woman who's 5'6", 92 pounds, and sick of how fat everyone else is has just about led me to make an exception to my usual rule of not telling perfect strangers on the Internet to seek professional help. Bizarrely, the women who used to take a 16 and now take an 8 are not making a fuss; the ones who were an 8 and are now a 0 are just traumatized by the experience. It's like they're vanishing!

Small women, yes, do have the experience of everything at a store being too big, but it's a mixed bag - it's a hassle, fine, but it's also a flattering problem to have, even if, as in my case, you know full well it's because you're short, not because you're a supermodel. Point being, the women who comment seem to think vanity sizing is about making the 16s fool themselves into thinking they're 8s, when the reality is, it's the 6s for whom a 0's now baggy who are most delighted (but if you ask them, horrified) with the new order.

-Library-thoughts of the day:

1) There is a "mute" function on computers. This memo has yet to go out.
2) The best way to feel super-productive is for the person sitting next to you to be fast asleep.

-I'll admit that I initially clicked on a Refinery29 (mildly NSFW, it turns out, if your W frowns on shots of emaciated women in bikinis) link that read "Ex-model Jenna Sauers breaks down just how much debt you can dig yourself into in the world of modeling" because I'd just finished a 300-page French novel, on microfiche, and by "finished" I mean "finished taking notes on," not just perusing, and this seemed like as good an antidote as any. Whatever this was, it was not going to be about the doomed marriage of a Belle Epoque anti-Semite and an ardent Zionist. Also because I was curious how any profession, assuming we're talking modeling-as-job, not modeling-as-front-for-scam-or-brothel, any profession, that is, that one does not need to go to school for, could bring about debt at a level worth blogging about. I would have assumed modeling would be like any other glamorous field - a lot of people working for next to nothing, all aspiring to be among the few who make it big. And I'd read that certain really high-profile assignments in that industry are unpaid, 'for exposure,' which is consistent with how it goes with writing sometimes, too. But debt? Was this, like, spending more than earning debt, which could happen regardless, but might be more tempting if you're young, thin, and surrounded by nice clothes? Seems not - it's quite literally debt owed to agencies. Apparently modeling - like law school, like every other human endeavor - can take the form of a scam, even if you're ostensibly qualified and going through legitimate channels. Huh.

But that's not what stuck with me. Nor was anything fashion- or body-image-specific about the post, although that would bring some good continuity with Item 1, I realize.* No, what I was struck by was the extent to which the piece is written from the perspective of someone who can hear the chorus of YPIS forever in the background. The dual and dueling impulses of 'I'm aware of how lucky I've had it' and 'I'm not, you know, privileged' take up the bulk of the preface, and resurface later in the piece. We learn that the writer graduated from college without debt. But! not because she's from a wealthy family or anything. No, she's scrappy! But privileged! And she will take a moment to thank all who helped her along the way, because she's not the clueless sort who'd take such things for granted. But let's not forget, just because she graduated without debt doesn't mean she's one of them. Yes, her shoes were Gucci. But $8.99!

Here is as good a place as any to note that Sauers is a writer for Jezebel, a site notorious for its YPIS-ful atmosphere. My sense is that this is an example of someone who writes well, and who has an interesting story, but who is held back by the disclaimer requirement that has been foisted upon her. One comes away from the piece with a very precise idea of where, socioeconomically-speaking, the writer is coming from, something that could have been summed up as 'high cultural capital, middle economic capital', but that we now know in excruciating detail. My question, then, is: what does this add? For one thing, we're not really privy to the entirety of the writer's place on the privilege spectrum - it's kind of unusual for international students to do undergrad in the US, which suggests even more cultural capital than first meets the eye. But who cares? Before we even get to the part about the rather shocking exploitation in that industry, we've heard so many apologetic disclaimers that we've forgotten what the point of the whole thing was. It becomes far more navel-gazing than an article that begins with pictures of the author's actual navel need be.

*OK, I will admit that it did occur to me that someone with a college degree, cultural capital (but not economic!), and looks that would make a career modeling plausible might consider channeling that into any number of professions for which being especially good-looking would be a plus, but not the bulk of the job description. Which is, I suppose, where she's ended up.