Being size 8 used to mean being positively tiny, nowadays it’s all size 6 and less. But where are these tiny people, asks Liz Frost
I’m a size 8. I’ve always been perfectly happy that way. I mean, I’ve never been skinny, but anytime in my life I developed a slight paunch or spotted my cellulite-clad bottom in a three-way mirror, I’ve simply consoled myself with the fact that well, I couldn’t get any smaller could I? Or clothes just wouldn’t fit me. In fact pass me another donut because if anything, I probably need to fatten up. Until recently…
I remember it well, the day the ‘diddy’ people came. There I was, breezing around Topshop - in the Petites section no less - feeling all small and delicate, when I saw it: a lone hanger, peeking out from the top of a tiny jumper. Rubbing my eyes and looking again I confirmed it to my horror. A size 6.
Before long they were all at it. Not just Topshop, but Oasis, Warehouse, New Look, even Next. To my horror I was no longer the smallest lady of them all. Like the evil step mother in Snow White, I found myself cackling into my changing room mirror and begging of it ‘just who is the smallest of them all?”
Remembering this the other weekend, I decided to find out. I went in search of this new breed of ‘diddy’ person to see for myself the myth that had knocked me from the bottom of the sizing chart.
I hit Oxford Street with a purposeful stride, casting my eyes this way and that in search of the elusive high street Elves. I wondered where they hung out. Did they congregate in salad bars, saying no to extra dressing, maybe they had secret tiny grottos that nobody else knew about. By the afternoon, when I still hadn’t spotted one, I began to wonder if perhaps they were too small to be seen by the naked eye.
It wasn’t long before I was distracted though, Miss Selfridge had just put out a new line and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame… I gathered up armfuls of skinny jeans and empire line dresses – all size 8 of course - and headed for the changing room.
That’s when I finally spied one. A size 6-er, right there in the Miss Selfridge changing room. I peeked at her from behind my curtain as she disappeared into the cubicle next to mine. I jealously eyed her size 6 waist and resisted the urge to quiz her for diet tips. Going back to the task in hand, my size 8 stash didn’t seem so attractive. I glumly pulled on the skinny jeans and emerged shyly from the changing room. Size Sixer was there in the very same pair. She shot me a smile. Was that sympathy I saw in her eyes? I smiled back pathetically. Just as I turned to go back into my changing she spoke.
“I wish I had a figure like yours,” she said. And then swiftly disappeared into her changing room as if by magic.
Liz Frost is a freelance writer specialising in features for women's magazines. She writes for Company, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Zest, B and Bliss. Email her at liz_frost@yahoo.co.uk, even if it's just to say hello!
