The famous 1950s sex symbol Marilyn Monroe wore somewhere between a size 12 and 16, with measurements approximating 36”/23”/36”, according to an article on snopes.com and other sources. Today, not only are sizes 14 and 16 considered to be “plus sizes”, but the garments themselves are substantially larger. This means that if Monroe were shopping in a store today she’d be much more likely to fit a size 6, or 8.

In the 1940s, the fashion industry in the United States attempted to standardize women’s clothing sizes. This was an effort to accommodate the shift that the general public was making from personally tailored clothing to “ready to wear” garments, available in department stores. The sizes started at 4, and a 6 was considered “average.” This sizing applied to pants, blouses, coats and dresses, theoretically unifying all parts of a woman’s wardrobe.

Since this ambitious attempt more than 50 years ago, America’s fashion industry is much less unified. Clothing sizes vary greatly from store to store; a woman could easily be a 2 in one location and a 6 at another. Armed with a tape measurer, we visited eight clothing stores at Bayshore Mall: Forever 21, GAP, Banana Republic, Aeropostale, Amercan Eagle, H&M, Pacsun, and Delia’s. For our research we chose to measure jeans, as they are familiar to almost everyone and available at most retailers.

The first inconsistency we noticed was the labeling of the clothes themselves. For example, GAP uses traditional even-numbered sizing (4, 6, 8…), though Pacsun uses odd numbers (3, 5, 7…). H&M and Forever 21 use measurements in inches (28”, 30”, 32”…), and still others like Aeropostale list two numbers on their tags (5/6, 7/8…). People who shop for their jeans at several stores can easily be thrown off by these measurements, which are both conflicting and confusing.

The actual waist measurements of these jeans proved to be just as inconsistent as their sizing. For example, a size 6 at American Eagle measures out to 33.5”; a size 5/6 at Aeropostale, which one could safely assume would be smaller, was actually 34.25”.

Even those stores that used measurements to label their jeans did not stick true to size. A supposed 30” at Forever 21 was in fact 38”, which is inflation of more than 25%.

Not a single pair of jeans we measured had the accurate size on the tag. On average, the measurement was 4.5” larger than labeled, and no pair was less than 2.5” larger.

Higher prices proved to be no indication of sizing accuracy, with several pairs of $19.99 jeans from Aeropostale closer to their advertised sizes than $78 jeans from Banana Republic.

This size inflation has prompted the creation of new, smaller sizes which have previously never existed. The sizes 0 and 00 have both been introduced within the past few years. The 00 waistbands we measured varied from sizes 28” to 31”.

Size inflation is no secret within the fashion world. Since the 1980s, its existence has been admitted within the industry. A significant portion of the inflation can be attributed to what is referred to as “vanity sizing,” in which retailers specifically tailor their clothing to fit the demographic that they’re selling to.

This idea was consistent within our data; the two stores with the greatest size variation were Forever 21 and H&M, both of which have definitively styled clothing. GAP, on the other hand, which caters to a more middle-of-the-road consumer, sizes their clothes more consistently.

On the other hand, the average American woman is no longer a size 6 like she was in the 1940s. According to shopping.msn.com, “average” is now a size 14. So if one store tells a woman she has a 30” inch waist and the other tells her she has a 38” waist, at which is she more likely to shop? To a certain extent, the sizes are inflating along with the American public.

All of our collected data points at the obvious: there is no longer any sizing standard for women’s clothing, not only from brand to brand but within individual stores themselves.

The purpose of fashion has always been to make the customer look good. If stores are inflating sizes and in some instances even distorting objective measurements, that dynamic has changed. The sizing system is both confusing and manipulative; it doesn’t take long to figure out that being lied to doesn’t make you any skinnier.