It amazes me what the tee-shirt industry has managed to get away with these past few decades. While virtually no one (except me) was watching, the makers of these classic and simple garments have been steadily shrinking the material they put into them while expanding the designations they assign to their clothing.
I remember, when I was a boy, my earliest tees being sized “small” and even at that, they fit pretty loosely. Then came the mediums, and same thing – hardly snug, just right. But the devious manufacturers began pulling the wool (cotton? polyester?) over our eyes when they began churning out “large” tee shirts.
I swear these newer shirts, in an earlier time, were actually mediums or even smalls, but there I was walking around in large tee shirts which, eventually, somehow, didn’t seem large to me at all. In fact, they felt more like mediums and on hot, humid days, even smalls.
And there were times on hot summer days when I actually needed help to pull these larges up over my head and off my sweaty torso.
The day I put on my first extra large tee shirt was as close as I have ever come to writing a hostile letter to a clothing maker or taking even more drastic action but I was too depressed to do it. The fact is, the extra large shirt fit just fine, which obviously meant that in reality, it was a large or even a medium size. How, I wonder, are these greedy capitalists able to get away with such a swindle?
Finally, on Saturday, I put on a new “two times extra large” tee shirt and I was crestfallen to realize that the Great Tee Shirt Scandal was now tipping in a new direction. Rather than being too small, this darned thing was way too big. I wore it to a family reunion anyway, having nothing else that was clean. Since then, I have seen photos of myself from the event and am shocked to realize that I was wearing not a tee shirt at all but an actual moo moo.
So now, the tee shirt makers are passing off moo moos as tee shirts. And I refuse even to discuss the size designation of “three times extra large”. That one is big enough to do double duty as a barbecue cover.
I hope someday our politicians in Canada, some of whom I swear are possible three times extra large candidates or even four times – yes they exist) will take on the tee-shirt industry. They could at least get them to come up with new designations after large such as “beach size”, “tent”, “blanket”, “moo moo”. At the very least, get rid of that ridiculous “extra” specification. The connotation of that awful descriptive term suggests that the wearer of such a garment is walking around in an “extra large” body, for example.
I have been looking for a cause to champion and realize all the really good ones are gone. With the advent of the tee shirt/beach blanket/moo moo, I think I might have just found the one that suits me to a tee.
©2018 Jim Hagarty
