Ladies and gents, it’s called VANITY SIZING.

In short, companies are starting to realize that when their consumers think they can fit into a smaller size, they feel better about their body image. Let’s face it: when we can fit into pants that would normally be difficult to zip, it’s super exciting. As a result, stores are thinking that we’ll keep coming back to purchase more stuff because, well, we are always guaranteed to feel good when we try on their clothes.

Personally, I think that vanity sizing is completely ridiculous, but I’m sure all you business majors know that it’s a great marketing tactic. Just as long as consumers are aware of the size differences, it’s not a big deal. But you see – that’s the thing. People are starting to believe their true size is not what it really is.

Girls are going around thinking that they are a size 6, when they really might be a size 8. For me, it sucks when I try on a different brand of jeans to learn that it is shockingly inaccurate. Plus, how annoying is it that you never really know what size to order online because every company follows a different sizing chart? Let’s face it – not every 34” waists fit the same.

In addition, a lot of girls are in the mindset that they only wear one size and refuse to buy anything bigger than that. As a result, when they do come across a cute pair of jeans, they are more likely to purchase their regular size – even if it fits more snuggly than if they had gone a few sizes up. Little do people know…not all sizes are the same.

How do we fix this? The only way to really tell what size you are is to take a measuring tape and measure yourself inch for inch. This way, you can refer to each brand’s sizing charts and purchase accurately.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, size should not be the main determinant for someone’s healthiness. Yet, when it comes to vanity sizing, it concerns me to hear that stores are doing this. Is it because they are ashamed of their heavy set population or is it because they are promoting larger waist lines? Why is it so satisfying to think that we need to wear clothes that are smaller? Sure, it makes us feel better to hear we’ve gone down a size, but what does it mean if all of that is a lie?

According to Esquire, the biggest vanity sizing culprits include H&M, Calvin Klein, Alfani, Gap, Haggar, Dockers and Old Navy.  The shocker is that stores also do this for guys! And we thought girls only had body issues…

Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about vanity sizing except for be aware of its existence. Don’t let a store reel you into their web of deceptions. Be informed and if you’re ever unsure, measure out their clothes yourself. You might find that their 27’s are really 29’s. At the end of the day, buy outfits because they make you look and feel awesome, not because of the size on the tag.

If you are the type to use clothes to monitor your weight loss, keep track by measuring yourself every so often and use clothes you already own to see how the fit changes overtime. Do not rely on the latest clothing – the newer the item, the more likely the sizing is off.

All in all, be proud of your body and know that how you feel is more important than what the label says. Wear clothes that accentuate your figure and watch those heads turn (towards your fab abs and lovable legs) as you walk down the street.

What do you think about Vanity Sizing? Twitteroo me @jackelynho.

We hear all of these ads and campaigns telling us to “Be fit! Stay healthy!” But, what does that really mean? Eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day? Exercise 5 times a week? Do you have to be a certain weight? A certain size?

Maybe not. There’s no doubt eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle are good life choices, but maybe it’s time we rethink things. Maybe it’s time to stop focusing on what we should be doing and define healthiness as how we  feel.

I am sure that somewhere in the mix, your weight, stomach size, or Body Mass Index matter. Yet, when it comes down to it, who needs doctors and health experts to tell us whether or not we’re fit? Your body knows better than anyone else how it is feeling. For example, bloating is the body’s natural response to an overfill of sugar or salt. On the other hand, a good workout will release endorphins, giving you a post-workout glow and leave you feeling pumped. You don’t need some health expert to explain those things to you. Nature knows best – you feel good when you do good.

So this goes to answer the question, am I healthy? I eat high-fiber oatmeal or cereal for breakfast, mangoes or an apple as a snack, a variable lunch (depending on what last night’s leftovers were), and for dinner I go for brown rice, a meat creation, and a vegetable side. As for my fitness routine, I work out 5-7 times a week, depending on my schedule. Most of my workouts are spent teaching hour-long classes as  a Turbo Kickboxing Instructor, but on my off days, I take it outside for a 4-5 mile run or focus on strength training.

To some, this may sound like a walk in the park, while others may think I am a health freak. Either way, this routine makes me happy. I don’t weigh myself that often because, frankly, I don’t care how much I weigh. As long as I can look in the mirror and create body peace with myself, I am content. To me, being happy with how I look and feel is true health. Of course, I’ll get my blood pressure and cholesterol checked every so often because it’s good to have that background information, but it’s not those numbers that I live by.

I used to think that being healthy depended on a person’s size and weight. Boy, was I wrong! Everyone has a different need and capacity when it comes to eating and working out and this one happens to be mine.

So, am I healthy? I would like to say so. How did I get to this point? By listening to my body’s needs and wants. So I encourage you to do the same. Do what feels right and remember that your body knows best.

Stay gorgeous, CC Readers!

As you fidget with the keys to your house you begin to think to yourself, this guy is too good to be true. There must be something wrong with him. Right? But what could it be? Bad in bed? Weird rash? Miniscule manhood?

Not that it matters – it’s the motion in the ocean, right? Well, now you can know exactly what you are dealing with…down there. Yes, ladies, someone has done the unthinkable: they took a condom and a ruler and put it all together into one handy dandy little (or, if you’re lucky, big) package.

Because you have always wondered if your man really was 8 inches, but never knew how to measure. (Note: breaking out a ruler while he’s asleep is never a good idea.) Because you never knew what 6 inches really looked like. Because you like to compare your conquests with those of your friends.

And because, well, it’s just sorta funny.

Not only do these condoms com with 14 inches of measuring fun (you never know when you are gonna meet Ron Jeremy), but they also come in lots of fun flavors. Papito Banana anyone?

It’s not so much the muffin top in and of itself that irks me. It is OSTS, or One-Size-Too-Small Syndrome, afflicting so many girls that just baffles me.

Why do I refer to this…issue… as OSTS instead of the popular, Muffin Top? Well, in my humble opinion, the phrase “muffin top” implies that the offender is what she eats, and likely has a fondness for Oreos and Taco Bell. This simply is not always true. Skin hanging over your waistband does not mean fatness. I’ve seen girls who can’t possibly be any bigger than a size 4 with a muffin top, and it’s not that they’re at all chubby. Instead, it’s that they insist they’re a size two, and the end result in the obvious: OSTS. It’s not pretty.

I’m definitely not a tiny girl by any means, and I completely understand the battle with body image. I get a little unhappy anytime I have to purchase something in a large instead of a medium, but if the medium makes me look like a sausage trying to escape its skin, is it really worth wearing? Is it really going to look like you’re a size medium to anyone but yourself? Of course not! I may groan when I have to reach for a size larger in that cute little dress or jeans, but if it lays just right and fits as intended, so be it.

Stacy London of What Not to Wear has said it time and again—the only person who sees the size of your clothing is you. What matters is the look and if you can pull it off. If you have to go up a size to look like you can breathe (or to actually be able to breathe) bite the bullet and do it. Don’t be a sufferer of OSTS just because you can’t stand to wear a 30″ waistband instead of a 28″ or 29″—I promise you, clothing was not meant to appear as though it’s painted on. And it certainly wasn’t meant to feel that way unless you’re a runway model rocking haute couture for a living.

Am I wrong? Is it just me who thinks it’s ridiculous to squeeze into a smaller size than you actually are?

[Photo courtesy of www.coloribus.com]

The question was, “What’s your ideal dress size?” and the answer choices were 2-4, 6-8, and 10-12. With barely a second thought, I clicked on 6-8 (my size right now as well as my ideal) to weigh in on the poll. When I saw the results so far, with about 70 votes tallied, my jaw about hit the floor. FIFTY-NINE PERCENT of voters picked 2-4 as their ideal dress size. That’s three out of every five women!

If you’re naturally very petite or tiny and/or if your doctor has actually told you that your ideal size should be 2-4, then you’re excused from my rant right now. Everybody else: listen up. Aren’t you the same girls who stand up against unrealistic media portrayals of women, who defend the fact that women aren’t and shouldn’t all be a size 2, and speak up about how seeing skinny models everywhere is bad for women’s self-images?

If so, then HOW can you turn your backs on all that and confess in a poll that you really want to be a size 2-4?

The point of many women’s outcries against models is that models are unnaturally sized. It’s rare for a model to be so thin—as we all know, tons of models have to half-starve themselves and do zillions of crunches a day. So why is their size YOUR ideal size, CC reader? I just don’t get it.

Most women, to the best of my knowledge, wouldn’t be a healthy weight at a size 2-4—they’d be underweight (sometimes dangerously so). Here’s a clue: you don’t look hot just by strutting around in a size 2 and letting your ribs poke out through your torso. You look hot by being your own healthy weight that’s good and natural for you.

Please, can I get some agreement here?

First, they treat their dogs as accessories. While I traditionally think that any dog smaller than a microwave is ugly, it’s not a tiny dog’s fault that he or she was born tiny. It is, however, a celebrity owner’s fault if she treats her dog as if it were a fashionable new Prada belt.

Hello! A dog is a living thing! If you’re going to treat it like a diamond necklace instead of like an animal, don’t get it in the first place. Yes, Paris Hilton, I am talking to you.

Point two—microscopic dogs are not cute. I know I already covered this, but it’s so important I feel the need to say it again. When a celebrity with flowing locks and perfect makeup is slobbering all over her Chihuahua, it looks like she’s kissing Swamp Thing. The fact that anyone would want to touch lips that have kissed every inch of a dog the size of a cotton ball is a mystery to me.

Finally, it is disturbing that dogs that can fit in handbags are actually put in handbags by some people. Most live humans can fit in a refrigerator, but do you see anyone shoving them in there? No, because humans need their space to move and stretch. Imagine that! Just because your dog is physically able to fit in your cavernous handbag does not mean that he or she enjoys being shoved up against your lip gloss and condom wrappers.

In a supreme example of just how stupid these celebrities are, the Alternative Consumer reports that dog smuggling and inhumane breeding of tiny dogs is on the rise in Eastern Europe because everyone and their mother wants a dog as big as a pacifier now.

Way to go, celebs! You’ve simultaneously managed to look idiotic and harm more dogs. Now that’s an accomplishment.

Shopping for me is a pain at best, and traumatizing at worst. Unflattering lighting, three-way mirrors, and those damn stick-figure mannequins that seems to be modeled after the Olsens. It’s one thing to be jealous of impossibly thin celebrities—it’s quite another to envy the figure of a plastic, headless doll.

Well, it seems that I’m not the only one who feels this way, at least about the mannequins. The entire country of Spain agrees. The Health Ministry of Spain and major retailers like Zara and Mango have come to the agreement that the skeletal mannequins must be banned.

“We are aiming for a model of healthy beauty,” Angeles Heras, director of consumer affairs at the Health Ministry, told MSNBC. “There is a lot pressure, not just from the fashion world but society in general, for women to seek models of beauty that are unreal and even unhealthy.”

Amen to that. When inanimate objects start contributing to the pressure on women to be thin, it’s time to take a stand.

Mannequins in major retailers will soon be filling out pants no smaller than a U.S. size 6, which, in my opinion, is still quite small, especially if they intend on keeping the mannequins the same giraffe-like height.

What I’d like to see in the U.S. are mannequins that reflect the size of the average American woman—5’4” and 152 pounds. Maybe that would do something about the grown women shopping in the juniors department for belly-baring camis paired with tight jeans four sizes too small.

In fact, these days I don’t touch anything that isn’t Styrofoamy or unidentifiable liquidy. Sure, that lacy thing is pretty, but if it ain’t padded, it ain’t perfect.

My boobs aren’t small. They’re not big either. They’re right in the middle, somewhere between I’m-Running-Free-In-A-Backless-T-Shirt! and Even-Straight-Girls-Stare-At-Them!

Growing up, I was so freaked out by my body that I would grab things off the rack at Target without even looking, and thus have never truly figured out my size.

Somewhere along the line I realized that knowing your exact bra size wasn’t as important as the padding that pushed the boobs up, and since then, I’ve made it my hobby the find all the new kinds of padding and try them all out personally.

Like the author of this article, while enjoying the awesome cleavage that can be produced by push-ups, I’m always a little worried that any guy who might be interested in The Girls will be disappointed once he realizes I do not, in fact, have a size 34 C.

Is it false advertising? I always wonder. Everyone knows boobs are like food to guys, and if my grapefruits end up really being oranges, will they be annoyed enough to look for something less fake (and less acidic)?

I can’t speak for every guy, but the one’s I’ve been with have never complained, or, I could venture, have even noticed. Most of them are just thankful I have boobs, they’re not whipping out a tape measure and scrutinizing the difference between bound and braless.

A few friends of mine can’t understand why I go padded. I don’t see the need to lie, they usually say, I’m not embarrassed by what I have. Point taken. But I’m not embarrassed by what I have either. I wear push-up bras for the same reason I wear shirts that embrace my curves and shoes that make my legs look longer. It’s all about confidence boosting.

So yes, I’m going to continue my push-up quest. I will happily and proudly rock the enhanced cleavage. I may not have the kind of boobs people write stories about, but I have a pair I’m proud of.

And isn’t that half the battle?

What about you, girls? Push-up or Au Naturale?