Women's clothing sizes

Women's clothing sizes have taken on almost mythic proportions. From the "perfect" size 6 to the size 24W, theses sizes have no bearing on reality. The actual measurements that these "sizes" reflect vary from clothing manufacturer to clothing manufacturer.

If that weren't enough, adult females have three or four different "magic" size charts to choose from. There's juniors, which initially seems like it should have only smaller clothes, this is not really true, since it goes up to size 17 in some stores, but is cut differently, for a figure that carries more weight about the midsection and less in the hips, or to be blunt, the butt and thighs, as the stereotypical teenager does. For fun, it starts at size 1, and goes up in increments of 2, so the sizes are all odd.

Then there is the "Misses" department. WTF? This is not even a politically correct name. It reflects "normal" adult women. It goes from about size 0 to size 18, but evenly.

Then there is "Woman's". This means clothing for overweight women. No really, that is what it is code for. Granted, there might be some women who shop there who simply are very large busted and need a roomier shirt, but generally, that is what this section is for. Depending on the department, this size might start out at an unusually large 8 and go up, or it might just start at 16 or 18 and go up, or it might make up a completely different sizing chart. So people don't feel bad.

Of course, none of these are actually standardized across brands or stores.
And people wonder why women have issues about their size.

Mind you, I'm leaving out less commonly used sizes. For more information, check this chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_standard_clothing_size#Women.27s_sizes

Now, you might say that this is because women are harder to fit then men, with many more body types. This is somewhat crap. Most men's pants fit most women quite comfortably. Just not as tightly or closely. Ask any GAP sales representative how many women buy men's pants. If men were expected to wear pants that hugged their bodies the way women do, they'd need 3 or 4 different sizes too. It just seems to me that it would make more sense to have one department where sizes scaled linearly based on, say, some internationally recognized standard of measurement. Men's pants are measured in inches. I'm no great fan of the English measurement system, but anything is better than this.