I was a size 5 once.

If you were a fashion conscious adolescent in the late 80s and early 90s, you’ll remember a shop called 5-7-9.(Oh wow, they still exist!)  The deal with 5-7-9 shops was that they only carried clothing up to size 9. Although sizes 5 and 7 were more common place, they also offered size 3, as well as the infrequently purchased size 1. I remember wandering into a 5-7-9 shop with my mom when I was about 13 years old and being delighted that they carried petite size 3 dresses, while my mom muttered aloud “who on earth is a size 1″?
The occasion for this particular shopping expedition was to purchase a semi formal dress for the Middle School prom. As a seventh grader, I had to resort my mom hand sewing me a dress since I was a girls size 7/8 and, well, you couldn’t get a prom dress in that size. The only option was the tradition flower girl style dress. My mom painstakingly sewed me a teal green satin Gunne Sax dress complete with puffed sleeves, sweetheart neckline, and tulle netting underskit. It was actually a great dress, when you come right down to it, considering it was made by hand and was done correctly with the proper fabric and lining and the tulle netting and all that. The problem was my dress was somewhat juvenile looking compared to my friends. But at that point I was used to looking about 5 years younger than my peers.

Back to the mall. I ended up purchasing my size 3 semi formal dress for the prom, as well as another size 3 dress for my 8th grade graduation – a lovely orangy-peach colored halter neck jumper skort thingy with a funky black geometric pattern design printed all over the fabric. It was hideous even by 1989 standards but I thought it was cool because it was the same dress that was featured in an ad for the store in Seventeen magazine, so I had to have it. I seldom shopped at 5-7-9 after that because most of the clothes there were too dressy for school, and being a backwoods country hick kid attending school in central NH, there was no reason to get up in the morning and dress like a character from “Beverly Hills, 90210″ (a show that I never once saw while in high school since it was on Fox, and the only way to watch Fox if you lived in NH in the early 1990s was if you had cable, and our town did not have cable. If you’re about to call me out on how on earth could I possibly know what the characters wore on 90210 if I did not watch the show, well, I read about it in Seventeen magazine).

My point is that in 1989, at the ripe old age of 13, I was astounded that the size 1 existed in the 5-7-9 store and wondered along with my mom who on earth would fit into it, because at 4′10″ and 85lbs, I certainly did not.

I had no occasion to purchase any new formal dresses during high school because I was poor and I always borrowed dresses from friends for events such as the Winter Carnival Ball. I did somehow manage to talk my parents into a brand new dress from JC Penney for the high school graduation every year (being a member of band, we were required to perform at graduation in semi formal attire).

For my own senior prom, May of 1994, I returned to the 5-7-9 shop to purchas my prom dress. As it so happens, the very style of that dress is popular again, because when Andy and I were shopping at the Pheasant Lane mall the other day I spied one in Express that looked almost exactly like it. This prompted a trying on of my own prom dress upon returning home (because for reasons that I cannot explain, I still own all of my dresses from high school). The dress does still fit, although I could barely zip it up and breathing was not exactlyl easy. Were I to have to actually wear it to anything prom-like that might include eating, dancing, walking, getting in and out of a vehicle, or sitting down…well, let’s just say I doubt I would make it through the night without busting a seam. You’re probably wondering why this is interesting, because, like, nobody at age 32 is going to fit into a dress they wore at 17.

The dress is a size 5. I kid you not. I remember trying the dresses on that day and the size 3 was a bit too snug, so I opted for the 5. The discovery that I was apparently a size 5 at the age of 17 was interesting, after the notorious jeans shopping expedition of several weeks ago that culminated in be purchasing a size 0 pair from the Gap that are still a little too big.

This past weekend Andy and I embarked on the Great Closet Caper (more on that later) which involved emptying the entire contents of our closet, installing an entire shelving unit thingy that would make ClosetMaid™ proud. At one point I decided to inventory all of my clothes and examine just what I had, where and when it was purchased, what size it was, and how it fit.

We already discussed the size 5 prom dress from 5-7-9 Shops, purchased in 1994. There was a size 7 semi formal dress that was given to me by a much older friend who had purchased it when she spent a year in France in the mid 1980s. Size 7 people. And it fit me pretty darn well. I had a size 3/4 dress from Esprit that I got in 1996 that fit perfectly, as well as a size 4 dress from the Gap that I bought when I was a sophomore in high school, age 15, circa 1991. There were several pairs of pants purchased at The Gap when I was in college, all size 2 that fit perfectly. Interestingly enough, as time moved on, sizes got smaller. Pants purchased in the early 2000s were size 1; pants purchased after 2002 were size 0. Pants purchases since 2004 were kids size 14 or 12 or medium (thanks, Nike). My cheerleading uniform from high school, which is another example of something that I can barely zip up, was a size 9/10.

Although my body fat is definitely lower now than it was when I was in high school and my weight is also lower (in high school I hovered around 98-102, now it’s more like 93-95), I am “bigger” now, as evidenced by my inability to comfortably zip up my size 5 prom dress and size 9/10 cheerleading skirt. I definitely have gotten thicker in the torso – perhaps my lungs have grown larger (which would explain the freakishly high VO2 max, something that was apparently non existent when I was younger as evidenced by my sheer lack of athletic ability as a teenager). My hips are wider now, although my height stabilized at 4′11″ sometime around age 15.

And yet, on the rare occasion I purchase new clothing today, it’s either from the children’s department or it is a size 00 and still too big.

I was a size 5 once. Heck, I was a size 9/10 once. Interesting.