On visiting many historical sites and attempting to fit through the doorways, people have realised that the human race has not only been growing horizontally, but also vertically. This appears to have given them the mistaken impression that short people are extinct. As a result, every day we tiny humans have to cope with everything being too big, too high, too long and too loose. This applies to anything from everyone’s mouths being too high for us to avoid being sneezed upon in a large crowd, to an entire shop’s collection of trousers being too long for us to wear. The taller women admit that the former has no solution unless a petite person is desperate enough to want to learn walking on stilts for the rest of their lives. However, their response to the latter is an annoying “Stop whining!” which is followed by the suggestion of purchasing clothes from the children’s section. First of all, I don’t fancy walking around in dungarees (overalls for the North Americans) with a giant, smiley felt sunflower sewn to the front and secondly, I doubt many petite women would be able to wear anything from the children’s section unless they are hipless, tube-torso wonder women.

Though it is not only the taller women that assume short women have missing breasts and hips; the clothes manufacturers also participate in making the same narrow-minded assumptions. In the UK I am a 6/8, which translates to a 2/4 in North American sizes. Due to the clothes manufacturers’ assumptions I will spend hours trying to find a pair of jeans in a size 2 or 4 that fit over my thighs, let alone my hips. If I do manage to fit it over my thighs and hips I find that whoever made the jeans imagined I would have a much fatter waist and that—despite them believing I would not have hips or thighs—I would somehow own a gigantic, black ghetto booty like the dancers in MTV music videos. If, miraculously, none of this happens and I find a pair of jeans that fits perfectly around my waist, hips, thighs and butt, the jeans will be too long. If it does fit length-wise, one or more of the other problems arise and it makes more sense to get a well-fitting yet long pair of jeans and sloppily fold up the legs a few inches at the hem than to get a pair that fits in the length and throw a ludicrous amount of money down the drain getting it altered so that it fits my thighs, butt, waist and hips.

In the UK, there are many short women. The majority of women are only one or two inches taller than me. This makes me wonder why finding petite clothes that fit well is even more of a challenge than finding a needle in a haystack amidst a room full of silver glitter and giant fans. In England there are not many clothing options for petite women; you can either live with clothes that are too big and too long, or pay a fortune to get them altered. Only in the past few years have British clothing catalogues introduced a magnificent two-page petite “section”. Despite the majority of these clothes being hideously ugly, I decided to give it a try. Although I am only 5’2” I’ll admit my legs are pretty long. Unfortunately, my thirty inch legs appear to be too long for petite trousers, but too damn short for average trousers. The clothes manufacturers appear to expect the average 5’5” women to have thirty-three inch legs; a mere three inches shorter than my 6’4” boyfriend’s. They really should stop making clothes for supermodels when only 5% of Western women are that tall and skinny. I find it odd that no petite models have helped us tiny people get more clothes made in our sizes when plus-sized models are becoming increasingly popular. If you’re fat and it’s not a serious disease or genetic problem, you can easily go on a diet to fit into clothes, whereas petite women can’t magically grow taller or purchase some kind of leg-, torso- and arm-stretching contraption to fit into clothes.

Recently, I moved to Canada. Hearing that in North America they had such a thing as “petite stores” I was eager to check out what amazing petite clothes they must have on offer. Soon after arriving I was quickly disappointed; the nearest petite stores are thousands of miles away from me and I would spend more getting to the store than actually shopping in it. On exploring my new home I realised that the “middle-aged mum at the beach” look was popular along with the “skateboarding hippie rock chick at the beach” and “crazy cat lady who makes clothes out of your fortune-telling grandmother’s tablecloth” looks. Well, at least it isn’t as bad as the “chav” look that is so in vogue back in England. I discovered that there was a nearby store containing a petite section. Knowing that North American fashion so far was not my style, I made sure to expect the worst when I went to investigate. And boy, am I glad I did: most of the clothes looked like something an 85-year-old would wear to a wedding with a rather oversized hat covered in feathers.

After all the stress and frustration of trying to find pretty, stylish clothes that fit in the West I am seriously considering moving to Asia. After all, it is much easier than waiting until I’m 85 to look normal in today’s petite clothes or getting a leg extension operation, having my hips filed down, getting liposuction on my thighs and butt implants just to fit into that nice pair of jeans I saw the other day.

-Lucy, 5'2"