One of the many things I will never understand about people is why they choose to buy clothes that are two sizes too small for them. Well, I do know why. Ye olde Wishful Thinking. You don’t want to be a L, you want to be a S. So you buy the Small, thinking it will make you look small. But it doesn’t. It makes you look like a sausage exploding out of its casing.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking is not effective in these situations. Much like it does not turn Monday into Friday, it will also fail to make you shrink. So I will say that I understand this delusional thought process up until the point when you put on these tiny clothes and look in the mirror. Once you have that proof…how are you still making these poor decisions?

People fervently believe that smaller clothes make you look smaller and bigger clothes make you look bigger. Um….no. I will admit, in the extreme, big clothes can make you look big. If I put on a Muumuu, I might look like a house. But when I wear this certain pair of shorts I have that is two sizes too big because they were on sale and I was determined to get them even if they didn’t fit at all, I don’t look like a house; I look like one of those starving kids on the Feed this Sad, Starving Kid for 10 Cents a Day (If You Don’t, You Have No Soul) commercials. My little twig legs are standing there all lonely-looking inside my cavernous shorts. It’s great. But take those same legs, and stick them into a pair of shorts I still have from high school, and my legs suddenly look like dough exploding out of a Pillsbury can of biscuits.

Photo credit: workingmansdiary.com

I squeeze my legs through them and have a flashback to my days of playing with the Play Doh Fun Factory. How can I look thin one day and fat the next? Because it’s not just about what size your body is, but what size you put on your body. Even a 94-pound model can have a Gus Gus moment if you put small enough clothes on her.

So get over this mental block of refusing to buy a bigger size. Just accept the size you truly are. Not because it is “important to accept yourself” blablabla – but because it will make you look better! Do you really think that somebody is going to be impressed that you can fit into a 0? Not if you “fit” into it like this:

“It fits!”
Photo credit: thejunoesque.com

Besides, who is even going to know what size you are wearing? No one. That’s who. Unless of course you forget to take that sticker off the front that repeats your size 12 times like I sometimes do. Or unless you proactively point out to people what tiny sizes you wear like some pathetic, desperate-for-validation loser. Or unless you have friends who go around pulling the tag out of your pants to read the size. In which case, I think you’ll be able to quickly change the subject from the size of your clothes to, “You fucking creep, get your hands out of my pants!”

But outside of those rare scenarios, no one can see what size you are wearing. Everyone, however, can see your muffin top spilling out over your jeans like an erupting volcano. So think long and hard about what you are really achieving here before you buy that XXS.