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27-year-old Deena Shoemaker had simply been organizing and cleaning out her closet when she made an incredible realization.
Some of her size 6 pants fit her in the precise same way as pairs of pants that were – remarkably – size 12.
Stunned, Shoemaker continued to dig through her clothes and found even more discrepancies. Pairs of pants that ranged from a size 5 to a size 12 fit her body exactly the same ways.
As someone who’s spent much of her life working with preteen and teen girls in camp and church settings, Shoemaker was appalled – and also suddenly had a greater understanding of why some of the girls she worked with had such a hard time with body image.
“I remembered all the times I’ve heard girls say they’re ‘fat’ because they went up a pant size, or talked about all the diets they’ve been on,” Shoemaker recalled. “I’ve tried telling them it’s not true but they never really seemed to believe me. All the pieces fell into place for me when I saw my own pants.”
When she shared six of her photos on Facebook, Shoemaker tried to keep things light-hearted by joking, “No I’m not selling my pants,” before launching into extensive criticism against the fashion industry.
“At this point it's a pretty universally known truth that [America is] lying to us and [beauty magazines] aren't accurate portrayals of the human body…
But when you resize a girl's pants from a 9 to a 16 and label it ‘plus size,’ … Photo manipulation is one thing but how do you expect me to convince [young girls] that the number printed inside her clothes is a lie too? How do you expect me to convince her that she doesn't need to skip dinner for the next month because her pant size didn't *actually* go up by seven digits?”
People all over the world have read Shoemaker’s rant – and are in full agreement. The post has accumulated over 72k shares since it was posted about a week ago, and more and more strangers are continuing to comment on the post.
Shoemaker ends her post by reassuring the girls she works with – and everyone else – that as can be seen by her photos, “size doesn’t determine your beauty; your life does.”
See her inspiring post here:
