not 000!

At dinner yesterday with coworkers, I mentioned that I'd seen a trailer of "Beauty and the Geek" in the gym. It's a show where pairs of beauties and geeks learn from each other in a race for a cash prize. The women learn computers and cars, and the men learn how to treat women.



I described a scene where the geeky guys were sent to buy clothing for the women. One geek came back with a dress that was way too big. His partner said, "I'm not a size 8! I'm a size 0!" and he was very indignant, "How can you be a size 0? 0 means it doesn't exist!"

Alipe: There's a size 0?

Me: Yes.

Alipe: [to Darrell] Did you know this?

Darrell: [shakes his head no]

Alipe: The show is saying this guy is a geek because he doesn't know about women's clothing? So ... cool guys buy women's clothing?

me and Darrell: [laughing]

me: Well, there didn't used to be a size 0, but sizes have inflated over the years. Stores discovered that they sold more clothes if their sizes ran big. If a woman wears size 4 at Banana Republic and size 6 everywhere else, she'll like Banana Republic more. This caused an arms race. Today's size 0 is actually still bigger than a lot of people. So now there's also 00.

Alipe: I wonder if sizes will go negative.

Darrell: Well, if there's already 00, then it'll probably just go to 000, etc.

Me: Can you imagine how easy it would be to offend women at that point? "I'm not a size 000, I'm a size 00000!"