Plus-size fashion has made major strides in recent years, with even athletic brands whose image is tied directly to the supposed superiority of thinness expanding their lines to include larger sizes. And, of course, not everyone is happy about it.
In the case of one woman on X, “not happy” doesn’t cut it — she’s so furious about the way Lululemon handles its sizing that she’s decided to stop buying the brand’s clothing altogether.
A woman is furious that size 0 Lululemon leggings are the same price as size 18 ones.
This is a weird hill to die on because it’s not like this is a new thing. Clothes have always pretty much been the same price regardless of size; it’s just that the range of sizes is often bigger now. But X user Stepfanie Tyler begs to differ.
In a viral post on the app, Tyler included a screenshot from the Lululemon website showing that their $98 “Align” leggings have the same absurd price tag regardless of the size you’re buying. Which, again… is the way it has always been.
But Tyler said she will no longer be shopping at Lululemon until they implement some kind of tiered pricing according to size, the implication being that she’s entitled to some kind of discount because she’s thin.
The woman said that she’s tired of being forced to ‘subsidize’ fat people’s clothing by paying the same price.
“I’m done shopping at Lululemon until they stop making normal sized people subsidize clothes for fats,” Tyler charmingly put it in her tweet. “There’s NO REASON my size 0 leggings should be the same price as a size 18 and it’s absurd and wildly offensive to think we don’t notice.”
To say that her tweet didn’t go over well would be an understatement. Many clapped back at her for even caring in the first place, but especially for couching it as an issue about cost and fairness when it seems pretty obvious she just really dislikes fat people. She admitted as such in a follow-up tweet, in fact, in which she said she’s “always thought being fat was stupid.”
But others couched her argument in more salient details. Many pointed out that $98 leggings are already being sold at such astronomical markup that it’s probably not remotely worth the trouble, especially given the damage it would do to the brand image when people who aren’t size 0 suddenly have to pay extra. That would more than negate the fabric and shipping savings.
Tyler, on the other hand, who says she has worked in the apparel industry herself, called this nonsense because the bottom line is that plus-size clothing uses more fabric than size 0 clothing. She used bedsheets as an example of how many other textile products cost more depending on size for this reason.
And she’s right in a way, of course — more fabric is more fabric, and that means more money! And it is, in fact, standard practice among many clothing retailers to charge extra for plus-size clothing on this basis, in a practice nicknamed “the fat tax” because of the way it essentially penalizes fat people by making them pay more.
That take will surely anger people like Tyler and those who agree with her. You could certainly argue that couching the so-called “fat tax” as some kind of victimizing, unfair surcharge doesn’t hold water since, as Tyler argues, thin people’s sizes are the standard sizes and plus-sizes are the anomalies. Unfortunately for Tyler and her compatriots, though, that is not and never has been the case.
The average woman’s clothing size is 16, so it’s actually the size 0 leggings that are the outlier.
For ages it was said that the average woman’s clothing size was size 14, and it became sort of conventional wisdom to point out that “even Marilyn Monroe was a 14!” Of course, “vanity sizing” has distorted what each size actually measures since those days, but nevertheless, the point still stands. Waif-thin bodies like Tyler’s are not and never have been the standard.
In 2016, a study of more than 5,500 women’s bodies at Washington State University found that the average woman’s size had gone up to 16, which is typically the threshold at which “plus-size” begins in women’s clothing.
If you’re of Tyler’s fat-disgusted ilk, there’s certainly much bloviating to be done about what this says about the moral quandary of America’s expanding waistlines. Regardless, it’s not like any of this is new, and it points to one obvious, central flaw in Tyler’s argument about Lululemon leggings: Her size 0 body is the outlier, not a size 18 woman’s.
Which means that, by her logic, it’s actually the “fats” who should be getting a discount for “subsidizing” the time, manpower, and logistical costs Lululemon spends manufacturing tiny outlier leggings for skinny women like Tyler that most of its customers cannot and will never buy, right?
Huh. It almost seems like what happened here is someone wanted to whine about the existence of icky fat people for attention and then reverse-engineered a justification for doing so out of thin air. I only minored in psych, so don’t quote me here, but I can’t help but feel like this is a pretty strange length to go to if you’re as certain about your superiority to fat people as Tyler seems to be.
Really makes you think!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
