Measuring Up

Like most people, every morning I open my email to discover the inbox has been filled up with email after email from companies advertising a one-day sale with items offered at extremely low prices (but never the items you would want). I normally find things things only slightly annoying because while I don't like the wasted time of feeling compelled to click through them all when deep down I know I will delete 99% of them, it is not like getting rid of them all is labor-intensive. After a quick skim most are dismissed with the push of a button. It is a no-harm, no-foul situation and I can honestly say that until this morning none of them ever inspired me to make an impulse purchase. I don't care how great a sale is, usually my distrust of the people who work in these online warehouses is enough to talk me out of buying anything because I am convinced they will either send the wrong version of the thing I want or the wrong item altogether. (I've had a few bad experiences.) But this morning when I saw an $80 sweater on sale for less than $20 I admit it caused me to re-think my online shopping policies. Without giving myself too much time to think about it I clicked through and started to see if they had any in my size and in a color I liked. Surprisingly, they still had quite a selection. Apparently, the middle of July when the entire country is suffering through a heatwave is not really a big time for sweater sales.

While I was trying to find one I liked I noticed something else, which I had only seen a few times before: statistics. When you clicked on a piece of clothing you were given the height and weight of the model wearing the clothes along with what size they were wearing. It was like the saddest back of a baseball card ever. (This also confirms anyone could be a model as you never saw any faces, just bodies.) I guess this makes sense given that one of the biggest problems taller people like me have is that most shirts I buy aren't nearly long enough, but this feels like a largely irrelevant issue because no two bodies are the same. Even if you find two people who have approximately the same height and weight the odds that their bodies will have the same frame are very low. (185 lbs of muscle will certainly look different from 185 lbs of fat. What they really needed to provide was body mass index because that would give you a better idea of how the person was structured. But, I'm sure if you did that the stat geeks would only start looking at that number and old schoolers would say you can't put a number on hustle while Joe Morgan would dismiss the entire debate while proudly claiming to have never read the material in the first place. Sorry, this just became a sabermetrics rant.) The point is while I found this a little interesting it wasn't about to motivate me to whip out my debit card.

They say the more information a person has when shopping the more likely they are to eventually make a purchase, because knowledge is power. This premise makes a lot of sense when you are looking into making a big purchase like a car or appliance, but now the idea apparently is spreading to include everything. But while I appreciate any company that wants to provide me with more details to make my decision easier, there is a point when they need to remember this is a piece of clothing and not a car - one size does not fit all. I really don't think they have given me the right information in this case. I dare say they have gone too specific. They only gave you the one option to look at, which is fine if the person modeling the clothing is close to you, but seeing where a shirt hangs on a guy who is 5'9" doesn't really help people like myself. It could look great on him, but that won't have anything to do with me. If that is all you are going to tell me I would much rather know whether or not the shirt I am looking at needs to be washed a certain way or else it will disintegrate after three trips through the laundry because that will actually impact me. I don't like third-party endorsements when it comes to movies or shows, so what makes anyone think how a shirt looks on a random person will make me want one of my own?

This all goes back to why I am so hesitant to buy clothing online in the first place - I know shopping online saves me time and gas, but I would much rather drive to a store and try something on to make sure it is loose where I want it to be loose on me or tight where I want things to be tight and not take a third party's word that it will fit me perfectly even though they have never met me. Buying anything online is a crap-shoot, but clothing may be the biggest gamble of them all due to how varied two people can find the same piece of clothing. So, thanks for trying, but if these companies want to really increase sales they should hire fewer models who are willing to reveal their personal information to the world and pass those savings along to us because despite all my hesitations, in the end there was no getting away from how good the deal was. It was the great price that made me keep shopping until I eventually found a sweater which was to my liking and purchased it. It should get here in a week or so (just under the wire for fall). Still, the first thing I am going to do when it gets here is try it on because the fact it fit a total stranger very well had nothing to do with my decision to buy it. And if I don't like the way it fits I can only hope this company is as forthcoming with the information on how to return things I bought online.