The Ugly Pain of ...

It's Friday and thus time for

Five Clothing Scale Errors That Drive Me Crazy

As most of you know, I am not a tiny person - in fact not even normal size. Last I checked, I'm still about 6'5" and 300+ lbs. That means I don't buy clothing in the aisles of WalMart or Target. Clothing meant for us monsters is readily available elsewhere, but, and it is a big but, manufacturers don't make big clothing by doing a "fit the person" remodel. No, they simply take the pattern used for little people clothing and scale it so the some one measurement is in the ball park. The problem is that people generally don't scale linearly as they grow. Some are tall and thin, some are short and round, some have long torsos and short legs while others have long legs and short torsos, etc. Then there are people like me. I have the classic beer barrel on short stilts with gorilla arms and a bowling ball head build - and no neck. I'm serious, it seems that my chin is directly attached to my chest. Thus the topic of my Friday High Five this week. (Although it might better be titled Friday Low Five or Five Rants for Friday this week.)

• Pockets do not scale well. I have shirts that I could easily carry a midget in the pocket. Same goes for the back pockets on pants.
  
  
• Collars on shirts are too tall. When you have no neck, a collar can feel like a steel neck ring. Especially when it was scaled to a height to match the 20 inch non-neck scaling.
  
  
• Long sleeves are not. I have exactly one long sleeved shirt. Unfortunately, I do have a number of 3/4 sleeve shirts that were purchased as long sleeved shirts.
  
  
• Hats are just plain hard to find for people with big heads. (I heard that - it has nothing to do with egomania!)  With a 9 3/4 inch hat size, I can prove one size dosn't fit all.
  
  
• And finally, the capstone of my litany of scale ills: manufacturers chintz out and use a standard length zipper on pants. Which means that get to "that certain part of the male anatomy", one has to pull the pants down because the zipper ends closer to the belly button than the crotch. 'Nuff said.