One of the errands I ran Sunday with SteelyKid was a run to the local Eddie Bauer outlet to pick up a couple more pairs of khakis for work (well, they’re black, actually, but in style the same as the khaki ones). As is often the case, I ended up buying two different sizes– not just because this was at a discount outlet store, but because of the inconvenient quantization of pants.
I have a collection of khakis in two different waist sizes. this is partly because I lost a whole bunch of weight back in the Bad Time when I had horrible stomach problems (much of which I’ve gained back), but also because I’m currently kind of between available sizes. The 38 waist ones are a little tight, the 40 waist ones are a little loose. But there’s no easy way to get a 39 waist, because the clothing industry has apparently decreed that only even integer sizes shall be sold in stores. What I really want is a 39-33 (34 length is a bit long, and wears at the cuffs, but 32 length is borderline high-water), but 38-34 (or 40-34) is the best I can do. You’d think that at least one retailer would decide to go for the in-betweeners and stock only odd-integer clothing, but I have yet to see that done. Yet more proof that Paul Krugman is right about the stupidity of economic models.
Yeah, I could probably mail-order them, but it’s cheaper to pick them up at the outlet place, and more convenient. And hey, I’m a physicist– nobody expects me to dress well.
I can at least take some comfort in the fact that I’m a man, and thus the numbers assigned to my clothing mean something. As opposed to women’s clothes, where size numbers appear to be assigned using a sophisticated random number generator.