Memo to retailers: STOP messing with sizes.

We’ve all been there. You find an item of clothing you like, go to the change room and need to take two or three sizes with you because you have no idea what your actual size is anymore.

Cue a frustrated shopping experience trying on a series of clothes that don’t fit.

This is called vanity sizing. A practice by retailers to size their clothing down so you fit into a smaller size than you normally would. So if you are usually a size 16, you’d instead fit into a size 14 or size 12. It’s to trick you into thinking that you’ve lost weight and will in turn, buy the clothes.

But retailers? The jig is up. You’re not fooling anyone. We know we haven’t lost any weight.

Vanity sizing aside, clothing manufacturers have now developed a new way of messing with our self-esteem. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the rise of so-called “alpha sizing,” where retailers combine several sizes into small, medium, and large as opposed to using numbers.

Apparently, clothing labelled small is much more likely to sell out than clothing labelled with a size 6, or even a size 8. It’s also commercially more viable.

“If I only have to build four sizes instead of eight, my supply chain is going to be much more [cost] efficient,” says Ed Gribbin, president of a New York firm that consults on sizing and fit strategy.

Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except that alpha sizing isn’t consistent across the industry. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I have been stuck in a flimsy size L top at Zara, which didn’t even go over my head.

Merging a US size 6, 8, and 10 into a medium is going to lead to more changing room meltdowns. Combine alpha sizing and vanity sizing together and it’s enough to send our self-esteem into a downward spiral.

But at least it’s better than this retailer, who instead of trying to trick us into feeling better about ourselves, just went ahead with size FAT.

The clothing company is a menswear brand called, Fatyo, and instead of the standard small, medium, large and extra large they created Titch, Skinny, Fat and Jumbo.

But it’s not all bad news, one Aussie e-tailer is changing the online shopping game. On Sizeable, customers see a piece of clothing on not one six-foot tall model but on six different types of body types.

The site’s six models currently span sizes 6-14, and each model’s measurements detail their clothing, pant and shoe size along with their height, bust, waist, hips, bum, and ratios: shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to wrist, and hip to ankle.

Genius.

Have you experience vanity or alpha sizing?