Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina
Just let me buy a comfortable pair of pants without being heckled and ridiculed. This was so appalling, it’s all I could do not to scream. Now I know it’s a foreign country and I know I could stand to lose a few kilos my own self, but what this article describes is institutionalized, nationalized child abuse. You have serious problems when you have to legislate access to a size M.
LA PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) – Argentine girls struggling to stay slim troll street stores for low-slung jeans and midriff sweaters often dreading the cruelest of words from salespeople at the door: “Don’t come in, we don’t have your size.”
But now officials are telling retailers and the fashion industry to sell larger sizes to armies of teens in this thin-obsessed country, which suffers the second highest rate of anorexia and bulimia in the world after Japan.
This week, the province of Buenos Aires, home to one-third of Argentina’s 37 million people, gave stores 180 days to offer six sizes for adolescents and make them uniform for the industry in what is known at the “Sizes Law.”
There’s more…
Currently one in every 10 Argentine adolescent girls suffers from an eating disorder and Bello believes they can lower this rate with help from the fashion industry.
Sales staff say that even anorexic girls have few problems finding clothes in adult stores, where woman sizes are so small that teens can shop.
“Logically, I shouldn’t have found sizes for me in adult stores, but I had no problem,” said Paula Giraut, a 22-year-old student in treatment for anorexia who dropped to 88 lbs.
One. In. TEN. One out of every ten little girls is sticking her finger down her throat or just starving to death. Twenty two years old and eighty eight pounds? Should they live to see their 30’s, there will be a myriad of health problems cropping up because of the horrific strain on their bodies when they were young. One of the saddest quotes was from a mom.
“Last weekend, I asked a saleswoman if my 16-year-old could try a larger size and she refused, saying my daughter would rip it,” said mother Silvia Lannoo.
Dang. Mentally scarred for life would seem to be a fact of life.
World Stuff | Crusader | 
July 2, 2005 12:27 am
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Well, I have my doubts about the “1 in 10” bit, as I thought that particular statistic was the domain of the Gay and Lesbian folks here in the US.
Yeah, I’m a little dubious about the actually stats though I have no doubt it’s a problem.
The part that’s really weird is the idea that salespeople are insulting and refusing to sell to potential customers. Somehow, I doubt that’s too awfully common. Salespeople are not known for turning down money.
Well, having been to Argentina that’s actually the part of the story I can vouch for.
Yes, it sounds like we’re not dealing with a true market-based economy here.
Really, Mr. Bingley? DO they have some sort of Socialist culture in Argentina?
Salespeople are not known for turning down money.
And the last time you wandered into a store on Rodeo Drive or in South Coast Plaza was?
They will sneer you out of the door if you let them and, if you make it to a clothes rack, there’s nothing bigger than a 4 hanging there anyway. So, no. They’re perfectly content not to take your money.
No, it’s not the socialist aspect really, JeffS; it’s their attitude. To make a sweeping generalization, they are the most pompous folks you will ever encounter outside of France. A well known saying is that you sell argentines for what they think they are worth, and you buy them for what they actually are worth.
Huh! And here I thought that the Argentines took only German refugees after World War II. They must have accepted a large number of French collaborators as well. Perhaps even more than the Germans.
I still smell a socialist rat. In the US some entrepreneur would open a “Boom Boom Woman” franchise and that would be that. It looks like they have to legislate because all the old boys in the fashion industry close new guys out. Opening markets to competition what the long arm of the law is for, not for legislating what a private business can offer the public.
Bingley: what’s the corruption like in Argentina?
Even with my kids, many times I have taken them straight to the misses department, and skip juniors altogether- otherwise you are paying a lot of money for a minimal amount of material- and it avoids exploiting young girls who are barely out of childhood, thereby thwarting the attempt to keep them bare through adolescence. Have you ever seen an XL in some of the junior departments? They’ll charge twenty bucks for something that wouldn’t fit a five-year old and is going to shrink after the first washing. Forget that.
Welcome, Faith! I’ve read where quite a few mothers are very unhappy that the only clothing choices for their young girls are Christina Aguilera inspired.
I just commented on this very thing to Major Dad yesterday, during a trip through Sports Authority. We were looking for running tank tops. It was all ghetto, hip-hop on the guys side and itsy bitsy, ‘I’m a sand trinket’ clothing on the girls!
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