Why It’s So Hard to Find Plus-Size Vintage

Being over a size 12 isn’t new, so why is finding plus-size clothing from the past so impossible?

That’s where our special feeds fatty is wrong. As a demographically significant percentage of the total population (and of the share of customers for the vintage clothing market), being over size 12 *is* historically new. The obesity rate of early 20th Century children was near zero; likely the adult obesity rate wasn’t much higher. Obesity and overweight rates didn’t explode (heh) until 1980.

A size 12 dress on an average-height American woman roughly corresponds to a BMI of 27 — which is overweight according to CDC charts. Note that dress sizes have been inflated (heh) to accommodate the bulbously shielded yet still fragile egos of the rolling tide of fatties shambling into clothing stores and mashing keyboards at online retailers.

So to answer the question sloshing around our fatty’s gullet, she can’t find size 12+ vintage clothes because there weren’t very many vintage fat chicks. Take the Shed Pill, fatty!