Clothes make the woman—so why aren't they made for us?

The Mossimo Smocked Empire dress from Target—cut up to your pantyline and down to your cleavage. Seriously, who wears this stuff???

Last summer I wrote about the fact that I was surprised to find out that one of my really thin friends hates to wear sleeveless shirts and dresses as much as I do. Sure, we have totally different reasons—she doesn't like to go without a padded bra, and I don't like to bare my upper arms—but the end result is still the same: a huge percentage of women's clothing is unavailable to both of us.

It bothered me when I realized this, but I also figured it was a bit of an anomaly. But then I was shopping with another friend over the holidays—this friend is older than me, and like my other friend, she is very thin too. But unlike my original friend, she has a little bit of a bust. So when were out shopping, I didn't hesitate to recommend a gorgeous white sleeveless blouse to go with a new red necklace she had just bought. To my surprise, she balked. "I don't do sleeveless," she said without a moment's hesitation.

"Why not?" I asked. "You're so thin."

"You haven't seen what I've got under here," she said, pointing to the part of her arm that was obscured by her short-sleeve shirt. "I'm old! This doesn't look good when you get old."

"You're being ridiculous," I said, but she wasn't budging.

I'm not going to lie—it really bugged me when I found out another one of my friends refuses to wear sleeveless clothing. It bugged me because everywhere I go I see sleeveless clothes marketed to women—sleeveless shirts, sleeveless dresses, sleeveless pajamas, etc. Next thing you know they'll have paper gowns at the gynecologist's office with spaghetti straps.

I know this to be true because I'm always trying to avoid sleeveless, but it's almost impossible to do because it's EVERYWHERE.

And when my friend said she doesn't "do" sleeveless either, I started to wonder who the hell does. I can name two friends of mine who I know regularly wear sleeveless shirts, but that's it. Just two.

And then I started thinking about hemlines.

Because if sleeveless dresses make me feel a bit sickly, short hemlines make me downright ill. But everywhere I shop, all I see are racks and racks of dresses and skirts that stop two or three inches above my knee. I know it's in style for young girls to wear dresses like this, but what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to wear? I promise you that if most women don't like going sleeveless, they certainly don't enjoy wearing a skirt that skims the bottom of their Jockey underwear.

What's interesting is that I just found two gorgeous dresses that come to the knee in the most recent issue of Lucky magazine, but when I looked at the price I was horrified—they were both over a thousand dollars a piece. So the only people who can wear knee-length dresses are rich woman? Does it really cost that much more to add a few more inches of fabric???

Of course, it doesn't, but for some reason, clothing designers and clothing stores seem to only make clothes that have too-short skirts and too little sleeves. I wonder why that is.

Or maybe it's more complicated than that. I was complaining about hemlines being too short with a female student last month when she said that has the exact opposite problem—they're all too long for her and fall between her knee and her ankle, like a prairie dress. I looked at her and realized for the first time how tiny she was.

"How tall are you?" I asked.

"Almost five foot," she said sheepishly.

No wonder dresses are too long on her.

And that's when it hit me—the reason so many women hate the way clothes fit is because they're not MADE to fit us. Think about it . . . men's pants are sized two ways—waist and length—but women's pants and skirts (and dresses) only have one size: S, M, L, or XL (or they're numbered from 2 to 24), but they do not have one measurement for height and another for girth like men's clothing. So the assumption is that if we're short, we're also tiny? And if we're tall, we're also big around? That must make it pretty hard for my skinny six-foot-tall friend to find anything to wear. Not to mention my short curvy mother. The truth is that it makes it hard for all of us.

That might be why so many people recommend that women have their clothes tailored after they buy them. I have friends who take every single pair of pants to the tailor to have that part that gapes in the back cut out. Every. Single. Pair. That's gotta add up. And I really don't think we should be expected to that.

Unfortunately, the only answer is for all of us to stop buying any clothes until manufacturers start making clothing that is truly designed to fit women of all sizes. But I know that you all like to go shopping too much for that. So instead now that we know this is a problem, we'll just have to start talking about why it's a problem that the clothes they make don't fit us. If we raise enough of a stink, maybe they'll actually listen.

Even skinny women get the blues . . .

197 pounds
I've had the good fortune of going shopping with many wonderful women lately—sometimes I've been going out just for fun, and other times I've been with a friend who was on a mission. These women have come in numerous body shapes, and it's been a joy to see them all look beautiful at any size.

But what I can't get over is that all of them—no matter how thin or how curvy—have very real insecurities.

One of these women, for example, is very thin and incredibly well toned—she wears a size two and has Halle Berry's muscular arms, Jennifer Aniston's shapely legs, and Emily Blunt's tight little butt. But she didn't see any of that when we were in the dressing room recently.

Instead all she saw was her chest, which is a bit on the small side. She was, in fact, so worried about not having enough up top, that she refused to wear anything that didn't have wide enough straps to accommodate her padded bra, which she claimed she needed to look normal.

When I finally convinced her to try on a very fashion forward strapless dress from the clearance rack, I was astonished by how amazing it looked on her—it was both hip and adorable at the same time—and she was really rocking the look: the dress was short enough to highlight her toned legs, and her long dark hair hit her shoulders in just the right place to draw your eye to both her sculpted arms and her gorgeous hair.

But she couldn't see that.

"You look incredible," I told her.

"Are you kidding?" she said in a suspicious tone. "I don't have anything up here." She put her hands on her chest and cupped what she saw as her inadequacy. Then she nodded at me. "If only I had what you have."

I gasped. Her comment shocked me that much.

She was wearing a dress that fell halfway between her ass and her knees, and there wasn't an ounce of cellulite in sight, but she wanted what I had?

Then I laughed because, from my point of view, the situation was completely ludicrous—I wanted what she had, and she wanted what I had.

"You're crazy," I finally said.

But my friend could not be swayed. "You don't get it. I can't wear a dress like this. I have to have something with sleeves."

The irony of the situation did not escape me.

Though I have a few select sleeveless dresses, I avoid them almost as much as I avoid fried food. I'm just not that comfortable revealing my arms, which I see as a bit too fleshy for display. On the other hand, my friend has supermodel arms, but she won't show them off because she thinks her breasts are too small.

Together we made quite a pair.

Despite my protestations, I didn't talk my friend into buying that fabulous dress, but I did win in one regard: since then I have not thought twice about wearing my own sleeveless outfits, bare arms and all.

A side note: Need another reason to go sleeveless, strapless, and/or braless? Do it because you can. Far too many women in the world aren't allowed to show their arms, shoulders, and cleavage, and that's a reason to revel in them.