GRANDMA CAN'T SHOP ANYMORE.....

Looks like shopping for me is over!! In our local Sunday newspaper there was an article by a Patricia Mclaughlin ‘GRANDMA CAN'T SHOP BECAUSE NOTHING FITS HER RIGHT.’ It has me very concern and worried!!
In 1994 Patricia interviewed a William Rankin who owned Dress Rite Company. The Dress Rite Company made custom dressmaking forms for home sewers for $550.00. Three years before his company, as a side line, he made customize dress forms by casting women's torso in paper-mache so you could make clothes that would fit perfectly. It caught his attention a very different body shape kept coming up in his customized dress forms. He concluded it as the shape of the older women. William explained 'her body shape gradually shifts. A lot of things are different. There’s a little hump at the back of the neck. The neck goes way forward, the rib cage begins to expand, the bust falls and the spine condenses. At the waist there’s almost like a ledge that develops. The shoulders tend to roll forward, the waist gets larger, a rather large abdomen develops, and the buttocks flatten.’
Does this sound familiar ladies? It is like a whole transfiguration seems to take place as we get older.
He goes on to say these changes make it almost impossible for older women to find clothes that fit. So we tend to buy sloppy stuff and try to make do. Pants that fit them in the waist would be too big in the hips, so they were stuck with elastic-waist pants. Rankin also says ‘to make it worse women are wearing the elastic waist pants backwards to fit their pooched-out abdomens and flattened rears.’
How awful is that? Sounds like a nightmare. The article goes on to say that around this time the institute for standards research of American Society for testing and materials measured nearly 7,000 women over 55 noticed in 38 state’s concluded what Rankin noticed: 'as the body ages the head is carried farther forward, the shoulders roll forward to widen the back and narrow the chest, the spine shortens and condenses, the rib cage expands, the burst falls, the waist thickens, the abdomen rounds out and the buttocks fattens. '
To make things worse……. no one wants to accommodate for making clothes to fit women in their late 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90. The study also showed older women spent less on cloths so the market is geared to the younger set because they buy more. If there was a market for us we would be glad to spend the money!!! What an old gal to do? I guess we just hope someone out there will take pity on us and produces some stylish cloths that fit right. I don't want to look like a sloppy old lady but be classy and sophisticated in what days I have left!!! One can only hope.......so our shopping days can go on!!