The Average Woman Is Between Plus and Sample Size

When Bianca Vaccarini was constructing a few sentences to describe herself on the ‘About Me’ tab for her style blog, she didn’t talk about a hidden love for sprinkles or a burning desire to document all the beauty in the world. She talked about her size. "I am not cookie cutter shape, and the world was not made for my short legs, long torso, huge rack, small feet, unusually small forehead, and thick calves," she writes.

Vaccarini lives in that delightful valley between typical straight sizes and typical plus sizes, otherwise known as the in-between sizes. The average American woman has long been thought to be a size 14 (it’s actually probably a little higher now) which lands right in that weird spot of nearly sizing out of standard retailers, which typically run from sizes 0 to 12 (or 8 to 10 for high-end retailers), but not quite sizing into plus-size retailers, which typically start at a size 16. The in-betweeners live in a world occupied by many but represented by few, especially when it comes to fashion advertising and media depiction.

"For people who were like me who are kind of in between plus sizes and standard sizes, it’s hard to navigate the fashion industry because people want to categorize you as plus-size," says Vaccarini, who’s a size 14. When companies approached her for collaborations, they were more often than not plus-size brands.

"I do label myself as plus size even though I am more in between because I guess the straight-size blogging industry has a certain image," she explains. "When people see me on the street, it’s like ‘Oh, that’s a curvy fat girl, she’s obviously not someone who would be a standard-size blogger.’ They would put me more in the category of being plus size, so I get a lot more plus-size pitches from companies."

"For people who were like me who are kind of in between plus sizes and standard sizes, it’s hard to navigate the fashion industry because people want to categorize you as plus-size."—Bianca Vaccarini

Franziska Hasselhof, a medical student who runs a personal style blog on the side, never advertised herself as a blogger for in-between sizes but found herself getting linked regularly on Reddit threads when people were searching for style bloggers who didn't have model-sized dimensions.

On the one hand, Hasselhof says, it was great to get that recognition. "On the other hand, I’ll run across stuff that’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m so happy to find a girl who’s not stick skinny who can still look good,’" she says. "That’s almost a backhanded compliment, like, thank you for saying that I’m able to dress my body."

Remember when you actually had to call someone and give them an item number from a catalog to buy something without stepping foot in a store? I do, and I genuinely miss it. I miss marking the pages of cardigans or cargo pants in Delia*s that I needed my dad's approval (and credit card) to buy. I miss looking at shiny pictures of happy models wearing rainbow-laced Doc Martens and carrying Astroturf backpacks.

None of this means that I dressed particularly well. I spent most of 1990-1994 in oversized turtlenecks and silk vests before moving into my "indie" phase — mostly thrift shop T-shirts and corduroy pants with suede Vans, and finally ending the decade in flared Seven For All Mankind jeans, platform Steve Madden boots, and turtleneck J.Crew sweaters.

Scott "Lord" Disick, a famous young adult book cover model, does not use Instagram like you or I do. For when Scott Disick opens Instagram, he doesn’t see memes, nor bird’s-eye views of latte art, nor strangers asking him to "turn on notifications." All he sees are fancy houses.

Like, literally. After his posts this morning of a trip to Israel included captions like "Hashem is everywhere" and "Blessings on blessings on blessings on blessings" invited a closer look at the Lord’s Instagram presence, one intrepid Racked editor noticed that while Disick has more than 17 million followers, he follows but a mere 15 accounts himself. Furthermore, none of them belong to Kardashians. Instead, all 15 of the Instagram accounts that Scott Disick follows are home décor-related.