Attn: Woot Shoppers

[damselfish]

Or rather, shoppers of lady's t-shirt sizes.

Woot has changed manufacturers-- no big-- and the sizes changed, but once again, no big. Or so I thought. I usually get a women's small or a medium, depending on whether I want a baggy shirt or not since the smalls make me look great on confident days and feel terrible on insecure days (we all know those kinds of clothes). I'm only discussing my own pertinent sizing, so everything I say is in relation to what I wear and is not a criticism of the sizes other people wear.

A while ago I ordered a shirt, and what arrived was a poncho rated for baby elephants. "Oh hell, it must be a man's medium! That was dumb of you." And I went on my day.

Last week I ordered another shirt and it, too, was big enough to go camping in. It was, in fact, even bigger than the small men's shirts I have. I checked my order history because there was no way I ordered another men's shirt by mistake, and lo, I had not. So I wrote to Woot all "hey, so I got a giant shirt. What gives?"

They explained that they had changed their manufacturer and so the corresponding sizes are different and told me how to find out if it was a men's or women's shirt, since I was still convinced that I had a men's shirt.

Nope. It was a women's shirt. They posted about the changes, saying things like "However, if you've been buying (or wishing you could buy) ladies' sizes, you'll notice some changes that hopefully will make the shirts seem more, y'know, built for ladies," which I thought, YEAH AWESOME because then it could accommodate my bust and not catch on my belly and make my insecure days worse. The shirts were kind of tubular shaped and I'd love for more flare at the hip because I'm short and the lack of give at the hips means shirts ride up and all sorts of problems.

In short, YAY LADY SHAPES.

That's an old medium on top of a new medium. The new medium measures 19" I was sitting in class when I read this, without the shirts to look at for comparison, and since I have a 39" bust, I figured the new medium would be about the perfect fit, right?) but the old medium is 14.5", as seen in the picture*.

If you look at a sizing chart, that means that the old medium is even smaller than the new small by a good inch and a half. In clothing terms, that's a mammoth difference in fit.

Now I have zero problem with them making women's shirts bigger because women's sizes do tend to run ridiculously small. But simply moving things up the scale-- so far up the scale-- with little warning ("hey check the sizing chart" isn't the same as "btw we're making everything 3 sizes bigger!") makes me sad! Because now I can't get shirts from my favorite shirt place anymore. The solution isn't to shut people out, it's to add sizes.

Shirts that fit women like they're built for ladies. Pfah, right. What does that make me?

But anyway. If you're gonna buy from woot: check the sizes. Everything is way bigger than it used to be.

They did offer me to send me a women's small, though, so we'll see how that fits. They're a nice company from everything I've seen.

*If you're asking "Sam, how do you fit a 39" bust into a 14.5" shirt and call it 'baggy'?" I honestly have no answer for you. Shirt physics are beyond me, I just buy things.