ELI5: Why don't girl pants have the same two measurement system as guy pants?

Personally, I think it's really condescending, insulting, manipulative, and myopic of clothing manufacturers to treat women like this.

What people don't seem to fucking get is that literally decades of testing have gone into how manufacturers treat women. Young adult males are the golden goose of the entertainment industry, and nobody stands around going "man it's insulting how many tits and explosions we throw at young men" because we were young men and we know it fucking works.

The reality is that they're not treating women in a manipulative, condescending way - they're treating women the way women want to be treated based on decades of research on the topic. Clothing, food and household items are the areas which have focused the most on giving female customers what they want, because female consumers spend much more of their disposable income in these areas than male consumers do.

So if anything, these areas are the ones where we know what women want the best.

It's not like she doesn't know she's a 12, but she's having her internal suspicion verified that being a size 12 is somehow bad and being a size 8 is somehow better.

What kind of stupid bullshit is this? So what you're saying is that women shouldn't base their self-image on an arbitrary number, but they'd better accept that the LARGEST arbitrary number which can be applied to them is the "right" arbitrary number? Holy fucking shit is that ever stupid.

If you're a size eight from Forever 21 and a size twelve from Old Navy, neither of those numbers is more significant than the other, and telling someone that they need to identify as being a size 12 because you found a pair of size 12 pants that fit them is the single stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Women's and men's pants should follow more or less the same basic system of measurements, based on inches in the US or centimeters elsewhere, and taking into account universally consistent measurements of waist, inseam, and hip size (because waist and inseam don't necessarily account for curviness).

Except that the people who buy pants don't want that, you want that. Decades of market research say that you're the one who's arbitrarily trying to force women to conform to a system THEY DON'T WANT OR LIKE.

Essentially, you're the sexist asshole, not them.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread Parent