RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Legislating Larger Clothing Sizes for Women

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 8 2000 (IPS) - The Argentine Senate is discussing a bill that would force manufacturers of apparel to produce a larger range of sizes for women, to keep from marginalising a sector of consumers and avoid contributing to the emergence of eating disorders, which currently affect one out of 10 adolescents.

Unlike a law passed last year in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia, the Argentine initiative does not propose a “social pact” for voluntary compliance by manufacturers and publicists. The local version, like similar laws in the United States and France, would be mandatory, and would set strict deadlines.

A culture stressing the importance of the “perfect body” began to take hold in Argentina in the late 1980s, reflected by the climbing rates of cosmetic surgery – a trend shared with Latin America as a whole – and the large number of teenagers (90 percent of whom are girls) who suffer eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia.

“If the market does not take health into account, we have to take care of that aspect ourselves,” said the bill’s sponsor, parliamentary Deputy María del Carmen Banzas.

She explained that the law was designed to get manufacturers “to offer all normal anthropometric sizes, not extra-large sizes for obese people.”

The lawmaker said that even though her three teenage daughters are not seriously overweight, they run into major difficulties finding the clothes they like in their sizes.

Young women who are not slim run into similar problems at 90 percent of clothing stores in Argentina’s shopping centres, said Banzas. While a few brandnames specialise in larger sizes – mainly catering to older women – most of the brandnames for young women are only available in the smaller sizes.

“The fashionable brandnames that target adolescents do not want ‘chubby’ girls using their clothing, because they believe that would hurt their brandname, which is identified with languid, anorexic models,” said the legislator.

The sizes offered are 42 on down, while most women are size 44 or 46, she explained.

In line with international standards, sizes in Argentina are calculated as half of the waist measurement in centimetres. In other words, a woman wearing size 44 measures more or less 88 centimetres around the waist – a measurement frequently found among adolescents and young women, especially those who have had children.

But women who weigh even just slightly over 60 kgs are often frustrated when they look for designs for young people in their sizes.

Sometimes saleswomen are sympathetic, telling them not to worry, that “these don’t fit anyone.” But others can be cruel, snapping “we don’t have your size” to adolescents who would find, on a visit to a nutritionist, that they were just a few kilos over their ideal weight.

Banzas said that as soon as they got wind of the draft law, clothing designers and manufacturers and publicists criticised the threat to intervene in the market. But she said it was also a question of helping manufacturers become aware that they are losing a large share of the market.

“My daughter just turned 15, and we are throwing a big party for her this month,” Alejandra Ramos, a painter, told IPS. “We got tired of going from store to store, finding clothes that were too tight or that she wouldn’t even try on because she knew they wouldn’t work for her. In the end, we turned to a dressmaker to make her dress.”

Ramos’ daughter, a student at a bilingual school, goes to hockey practice twice a week – besides the games – and has a healthy diet.

“She could lose maybe two kilos, but I don’t want to restrict her food intake because the doctor said she expends a lot of energy on sports,” said her mother.

The draft law provides for fines ranging from 100 to 10,000 dollars for companies that fail to offer the entire “normal” range of sizes within 240 days of the law’s passage. And in the case of repeat offenders, factories or shops could be temporarily closed.

Designers criticise the measure, maintaining that each brandname targets “a certain type of woman,” and that customers have a choice. The problem is that adolescents, feeling the pressure to be in fashion, end up feeling they don’t have the “right” kind of body.

In recent years, some brandnames have begun to understand that they can stand out and gain clientele by offering larger sizes. Their products are the first off the racks, and customers often have to wait in line to be attended in their shops.

“The important thing is not the size, but the style,” is the slogan of a brandname in Argentina that traditionally catered to overweight women and has found itself responding to demand by making smaller and smaller sizes as well, down to size 44 today.

But few brandnames offer a wide range of sizes. Most of those that offer larger sizes continue to target – and to be associated with – women over 50. It is a vicious circle: no offer, no demand.

Some companies have already begun trying to produce larger sizes, but without a sense of proportion. “Women might have wider hips at 30 than at 20, but their backs don’t grow, which means the size that fits them down below is baggy up on top,” one saleswoman commented to IPS.

Nutritionists and mental health specialists who work with patients with bulimia or anorexia believe the new law could contribute to fighting the emergence of eating disorders.

They stress, however, that eating disorders have a psychological basis, and are not born in the fitting room.

The weekly women’s supplement produced by the Buenos Aires daily ‘Clarín’ dedicated its edition this Wednesday – on the occasion of International Women’s Day – to large sizes. Every section of the supplement – fashion, debate, sexuality, cooking and politics – focused on the phenomenon.

“Sizes for all” could be the slogan of the campaign, suggested the supplement’s editor, Andrea Rabolini, who said the woman who is not slim and svelte should stop being seen as a “social menace.”