Jamie Reidy says he’d call off the wedding if his bride-to-be used a feeding tube for weight loss.
ABC’s Good Morning America aired this report on the shocking diet women are using so they can reach the altar at their dream weight.
Here’s a letter to my future fiancee –
I love you. You. I want to spend the rest of my life with You. The You I see before me now, not the You you are imagining with cheekbones not seen in two or three decades.
But if You turn into a fucking lunatic who is so unhappy with the way she looks that she has to stick a fucking tube in her nose for a week, then I bid you both good luck with the rest of your life.
I obviously misjudged your self-confidence, self-respect and sanity. My bad.
My genes will burden our children with cancers, diabetes and heart disease; no need to curse them with your crazy, too.
Sincerely,
Your Ex-Boo
About Jamie Reidy
I agree with the author of this letter. WHY?, it would indicate to me that this person is a fanatic, and I can’t stand fanatics of any kind. Even if they are fanatical about something that is ‘good’ (not say what she is doing is good).
To me, it would indicate some serious issues with self esteem, and just how far someone will go to ‘prove a point’. Not exactly all rainbows and sunshine.
Someone just told me that, for some reason, the sizes of wedding dresses are often larger numbers than other kinds of women’s clothing. If you’re a size 6 when you shop at The Gap, you’re a size 10 when you try on a wedding dress. I don’t know whose brilliant idea this was, but it must contribute to many women’s anxiety about being too fat for their wedding day. Maybe the wedding industry is in cahoots with the diet industry? That would be an unbeatable, unholy alliance if there ever was one.
Seems to me the best business strategy would be to DEFLATE the numbers instead of inflating them. Make a woman feel better by saying she’s a smaller size than she’s used to. That’s what the high-end designers do.
Seems to me the best business strategy would be to DEFLATE the numbers instead of inflating them. Make a woman feel better by saying she’s a smaller size than she’s used to. That’s what the high-end designers do.
But unlike high end designers of every day clothing wedding dress designers have to face the hard reality that a wedding dress is a once in a life time purchase (even if she marries multiple times she is still only going to have a few wedding dresses compared say, dozens of everyday dresses).
In the minds of those executives their dresses wouldn’t be that special or distinguished if any woman that strolls along could wear them. (I know that sounds odd but I bet its what they think.)
So when it comes to making and selling a wedding dress they have to go for one big hit. Which is why wedding dresses can easily hit 4 digits. The feeling of exclusivity that I talked about below gives that woman the idea that “I am one of a few that was able to fit into such an expensive and tiny dress!”.
Wellokaythen,
I think you have the causality reversed here.
When you rent out event space, there is often a different price for weddings than for any other event. At first glance, this seems silly: why would a wedding be most destructive/harder to insure than a graduation party or a prom reception? Surely the latter would cause as many (if not more) problems than the former.
It turns out that the reason has to do with the wedded couples themselves. When something goes wrong during a wedding, the couple are infinitely more likely to demand a refund than the hosts of any other sort of event. There is no way for a venue to be error free 100% of the time, too much will always be beyond their control. So the only solution is to charge more for weddings and pass the expense along.
It seems like there could be a similar direction of causality here.
We know that some brides are literally insane when it comes to “looking good on their wedding day” (for proof of this, please look at the bit about the feeding tubes). Thus a dress shop that sells a “6″ which really does look better than a normal “6″ (because the woman inside it is thinner), will become more popular over time.
The problem is that sizes keep changing. I was a size 10 or 12 when I was a teenager in the 1980′s, when I was 5’9″ and weighed 150 pounds, well within normal BMI for my height. I lost some weight in my early 20′s but the smallest size I ever wore was a size 8 when I was 135 lbs and super skinny. Size 12 is now huge in comparison to 20 years ago; I think it’s considered a “plus size”. There’s also no consistency in women’s sizes anymore. What fits varies widely. For some reason wedding dresses still follow the old sizing conventions that the rest of the industry abandoned.
BTW, I’m part Scandinavian and when I was 135 lbs I was skin and bones; I’m not one of those willowy tall types. I had a friend who was almost my height who weighed 120 lbs and was a size 3, but she had tiny hips. But I digress!
They do it for their own selfish greed. See, any size in a bridal salon above 12 is considered a plus size, and therefore more expensive ($50 and upwards). So anyone over a regular size 8 (and remember, the North American average is 12 regular these days), or has curves outside the standard cutout will automatically pay more for a dress. Cash grab.
As for the sizes making women starve themselves? Most women know about the rule of 4 sizing in bridal garments. It’s personal neuroses. We all think (and get bombarded by the message) that on the wedding day, all eyes will be on us. If you have body image issues, even mild ones, that can really screw with you. That said, it’s up to the brides personally to swallow that pill, because it’s never as awful in reality as you think it is in your head. I’ve seen many an ‘imperfect’ bride rock whatever they were wearing, because their happiness and confidence were their real focus. Ultimately, your wedding is about actually marrying the love of your life, not simply what you look like.
This sizing info is actually mostly untrue.
What has happened in almost all major clothing lines is something called Vanity Sizing… So The Gap, Abercrombie, Donna Karan… Anything you’d buy in a department store like Macy’s or Nordstrom, or typical boutique is going to be about four numbers down from what it would have been when this type of even or odd-numbered sizing happened (ladies’ and women’s clothing will run in even numbers, 2, 4, 6, etc up to 14 – Juniors and Petites will run in odds 1, 3, 5, though Petites are changing to evens, too, in an attempt to separate from Juniors… but that’s way beside the point.)
So when they started using that type of sizing, a 4 was the smallest size, and my mom, who in the 1960s was considered way too small but was naturally thin, was a 6. She was about 120 lbs and 5’7″… Now I’m the exact same size (genetics), and I wear a 0 or 2. When I was 115lbs I wore a 00 in those types of clothing.
However true designer clothing and wedding dresses (which strive to be more like a designer product) have stuck to the original sizing, so I would be a 6 or maybe an 8. Not because they want women to feel fat, but because at least when I was working in high-fashion, they go by traditional sizes. Models wore size 6, and the scary, scary thin ones wore size 4. In a department store they’d be a 00 or XXS.
Now, a bridal salon will carry up to a 14 or 16 usually before they start calling it plus sized. Even lower-end bridal salons like David’s Bridal. Is this truly plus-sized? That’s not for me to determine. But if you think about it, the bridal salons aren’t the ones tweaking the sizing.
“but because at least when I was working in high-fashion, they go by traditional sizes. Models wore size 6, and the scary, scary thin ones wore size 4. In a department store they’d be a 00 or XXS. ”
Don’t they wear a 0 now? Like even by traditional sizing? I was under the impression that the bar just kept dropping.
Joanna,
I’m not arguing size standards in the U.S. of yesteryear and what really is ‘true’ sizing because we could get into a whole discussion where factors come into play (plus size in bridal stores where I live in Canada are supplied predominantly by U.S. companies, but a 14 and upwards in considered plus…whereas 16 + is plus-size in normal clothing), or the fact that sizing is different in Asia and Europe where my family is from is much different. Add to the fact that we are accounting for specific body types with the standard cutout, weight versus size (bone density, musculature, etc.)…yadda, yadda, yadda. See? Now I’m doing it too…the runaway train of sizing.
My point was simply that clothing size standards in the average store in the average town today are different than they are at the same time/place for bridal salons that are catering to Jan Q. Public and a woman who is let’s say a healthy average can very quickly see herself paying extra for her curvier hips or slightly more ample bosom.
And it all takes away from the actual point, that aside from burning about spending the extra money for a larger size, it really shouldn’t matter to a woman…at least not enough to radically diet by eating through a feedling tube or, as was the case with a very fit university chum of mine, buying her ‘actual size’ and bruising her ribs wearing a dress with a bodice that was way too tight.
To wellokthen: I don’t think any women’s clothing stores use accurate measurements anymore. Cheaper stores use smaller numbers, and expensive stores use bigger numbers. I’m a size 6 in Wal-Mart, size 8 in real life, and size 10-14 if the price for one article of clothing is +$300. This is to cater to the store’s target market, assuming the stereotype that poor people are fat and rich people are thin.
If you’re a size 6 when you shop at The Gap, you’re a size 10 when you try on a wedding dress. I don’t know whose brilliant idea this was, but it must contribute to many women’s anxiety about being too fat for their wedding day.
I think its a combination of not wanting to put as many resources into making the wedding dress (as long as we are still counting sizes like 1,2,3,etc… a 5 will take more material than a 3) and a the desire of exclusivity.
Kind like this:
Exec 1: “We want them to crave our dresses. So let’s get them to work for the dresses.”
Exec 2: “If we goad them into extreme dieting for the dresses then we can get away with making smaller sizes. That means less materials.”
Exec 1: “Yes. Covince them that our dresses are an absolute must have and give them some sort of goal to work for in order to get fit into it. Then they will hold the dress as a badge of honor to show how hard they worked for such a nice dress, and will be all the envy of others.”
(Evil laughter….)
Why aren’t women’s sizes like men’s where the size is based on the actual measurement?
Wild guess: the women’s numbers are smaller.
Because women are raised to be crazytimes about their figures and the numbers associated with it and different designers, ad agencies, ladymags leverage that anxiety.
why else would a size 0 exist? Why would one want to be size “nothing?”
Because the original sizing indicated _age_ not measurement.
A size twelve was supposed to fit a twelve year old girl. Somehow that got translated in all this craziness to a size twelve being the average size for a mature woman. Since the average woman is not usually the size of a twelve year old girl, they had to up the size.
I think there’s some fetishization of youth going on there, actually.
IDK. Theory: designers figured out long ago that women don’t want to know their actual measurements. Though, ironically, bras are sold in standard sizes that reflect actual measurements. But clothes aren’t.
Designer jeans are, Collin. Women’s high-end jeans start at size 24 waist and go up to 33 waist.
I wish it all went off measurements like that. Though even men’s sizing pisses me off in Australia, xl and 3xl in a diff brand can be the same.
Because men’s sizes are “vanity sizes” as well.
It’s nice to still be able to fit into 32″ waist jeans, only it’s a lie because my waist is no longer 32″ – it’s closer to 36″. As far as I know, only dress shirt collars are true-sized; the shirt itself has also suffered from a touch of the inflation to keep pace with our expanding mid-sections.
Male “vanity sizing” is most evident in condoms. Seems like the smallest condom in most stores is an “extra large.” Nice.
Math was never my strong suit, not even simple math. I admit I’m still not seeing the logic, here. Perhaps I am underthinking and overthinking at the same time. Let me explain my hypothesis:
If I’m usually a 6 and I go to try on an expensive dress I will only wear once, and if feeling good about myself makes me more likely to buy this dress, then I would probably feel thrilled that the number on this great dress that fits me is actually a 4. “Yippee! I’m a 4! I feel so skinny now!” Then I won’t feel as daunted at the prospect of paying so much for it.
If this great dress that fits me has the number 10 on it, I’ll be discouraged about my weight and be depressed. “Oh my God! I’m a size 10 now! When did that happen?” I might even demand that the saleswoman take the dress away because it’s depressing me, and I might even run crying from the store.
Presumably, the same calculation that goes into deflating the sizes of over-priced *everyday* clothes would also go into deflating the sizes of over-priced *one-time* clothes.
Then again, if that’s true, I wonder why every clothing manufacturer doesn’t do the same thing until the numbers get infinitesimally small. What prevents runaway deflation? (“At The Gap I’m a .00004 but at Nordstrom I’m a .00003.”)
It’s possible there’s no real calculation or manipulation going on at all, and it’s just the fact that different parts of the clothing industry have different sizing systems. Perhaps wedding dresses, being somewhat “traditional formal items” have an old-fashioned number system that other parts of the market don’t use any more.
There’s got to be a Freakonomics chapter on something like this somewhere.
Wow…this article shocked me…the level of desperation on that woman’s face is terrifying….
Although I do understand the impetus to lose a huge amount of weight and trying to look super slender on your wedding day (I got married in a white bikini and sarong on the beach and later wore a gorgeous sequined size 0 custom ethnic dress that I had inherited from my mother….I looked fabulous that day, I might add!)…. I am now 10 lbs heavier than when I got married but I don’t think anybody would have cared if I was 10 lbs heavier that day, except for me!
I understand extreme dieting and bootcamp workouts, but NG tube feedings is horrifying!
“But if You turn into a fucking lunatic who is so unhappy with the way she looks that she has to stick a fucking tube in her nose for a week, then I bid you both good luck with the rest of your life.
I obviously misjudged your self-confidence, self-respect and sanity.
My genes will burden our children with cancers, diabetes and heart disease; no need to curse them with your crazy, too.”
So much for in sickness or in health. I’d probably call off the wedding too, but only to give her the space she needed to deal with her illness.
I believe people need to be in good, working order before they enter into relationships. I’m not so keen on marrying a “project” or someone who needs “fixing.”
Yeah… I agree there’s a line to which a person should be expected to manage another person’s illness, but if there’s the possibility of recovery in the near future isn’t it the compassionate thing to stay the course? Assuming you loved this person enough to marry them like.
I agree 100% with this (though, I do think that a person who would do that would show their crazy WELL before the wedding, so the groom-to-be would have little cause to be surprised) – but why, then, are so many men OK with women being surgically implanted with sacs of silicone? To me, that seems insane and horrifying, just as much as shoving a feeding tube down one’s noise and actually maybe a bit more, as it involves dangerous surgery and permanent alteration.
It looks to me like the woman in the picture has implants but the writer’s not as disgusted by that alteration – why not?
Implants are seen as less drastic than a feeding tube I presume. To me, a feeding tube is pretty damn extreme! Exercise and dietary changes would be a better option. As for plastic surgery I think it’s also the increase in self-esteem that can come from the surgery which makes it ok for many, insecurity can be very unsexy so if she has to inflate the puppies to feel more secure then it’s her choice and hopefully it works ok for her.
I myself prefer people to use plastic surgery in times of say extreme weight-loss (loose skin), post breast cancer, fixing deformities, increasing penile size if it’s far smaller than average (if that’s possible), vs just randomly for perfection. It has the power for good, especially to restore peoples looks after trauma, etc but it can also be used far too much.
Also the feeding tube is a VERY drastic weight loss technique and the reason is for a single day, not a decade long or lifelong change to your body. If women were to get breast implants for their wedding day I’d be raising eyebrows!
Across the world – and right here in New York – countless people are malnourished and starving, while other people pay $1000s to literally starve themselves for vanity, with the illusion that a happy marriage begins with an expensive “perfect” wedding. Sometimes I just think everything is wrong.
I am normally to running a blog and i really delight in your written content.
The post has truly speaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your website and keep checking for brand new information.