Vintage Ad for Chubby Girls

• Wincey
  March 25th, 2008 at 6:55 am

  Ack, bring back horrid memories to the middle-aged amongst your readers, thanks a lot! Sears also sold “chubby” clothes and, even as a little kid, I knew there was something terribly, terribly wrong with their advertising scheme, and I simply refused to go there. Many years later, I had a dream that the Sears Tower (which I passed daily) was a massive looming Chubby Dress.

  The scars will *never* heal … NEVER!!!

• ted
  March 25th, 2008 at 7:23 am

  To think “chubbies” as a noun means something completely different these days.

• hedwig
  March 25th, 2008 at 7:25 am

  size 8 1/2 is chubby… maybe if you’re really short…

• smak
  March 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am

  If the clothing sizes are the same now as they were then, it’s interesting to note that a “teen” (now called “junior”) size “10″ was considered “chubby”.

  Isn’t that about average nowadays?

• amanderpanderer
  March 25th, 2008 at 9:42 am

  It’s better than the JCPenny “Husky” (for boys) and “Pretty Plus” for girls. I’d prefer “Chubby” to the weirdly proper “Pretty Plus” (which I always took to mean “Plus Some Fat.” I hate the term Plus Size…I should start a committee to bring Chubby back. I’d wear charming Chubby-sized clothes. That would rock.

  (I was just discussing yesterday the mix of sorrow and joy I feel when I see “Pretty Plus” Girl Scout uniforms. I feel bad for the 10 year olds who must wear them, but thrilled that I can get one in my size…WOO HOOO!)

• L
  March 25th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

  Sadly, these “chubby” sizes are probably the same measurements as today’s “normal” sizes… with yesterday’s “normal” morphing into today’s “slim”. People have gotten fatter and sizes have been changed. If you took today’s “plus” sizes for girls back in a time machine, you’d probably get laughed at… or the people would be horrified that we allow our children to become obese.

• sal
  March 25th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

  I kinda like it, but I guess everyone has a different opinion on the word ‘chubby.’ Plus, it’s a free fashion book! You can’t be mad at that!

  @amanderpanderer- On the thought of modern day terms, I never considered ‘plus size’ as all that insulting before, since it was about the clothing sizes (do please bring ‘chubby’ back, though). But I definitely agree about ‘pretty plus.’ That really does seem to refer to the wearer instead of the clothes.

  Guys really don’t have it that bad, I guess. Getting nice clothes in our sizes just means shopping at a ‘big & tall’ store.

• Tempscire
  March 25th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

  Actually, clothing sizes have changed since then. Unfortunately, it’s now vanity sizing…if you were to try on some clothing from the 40s or 50s, you’d probably have to get a larger size than what you would wear nowadays. Marilyn Monroe– curvy but certainly not obese– was a size 14 back in her day, iirc.

• Sunny
  March 25th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

  While I’m moderately bothered by the word chubby, I’m even more bothered by the apostrophe before the word teen. Why is it there? It isn’t short for anything! (Well, arguably, it could be short for teenager, but then the apostrophe would occur after the word, not before it.) Baffling.

• donna
  March 25th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

  I prefer “Rubenesque”, myself.

• Caro
  March 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

  I think vanity sizing explains a 10 1/2 being a “chubby” size. Outside the US, where vanity sizing isn’t the norm, sizes run very differently. I’m a 4 or 6 in the US, but in New Zealand I’m a 12 or 14. I’ve even noticed re-sizing going on in my lifetime (I’m 27)– I used to be a 6 or an 8, and I don’t think I’ve lost significant weight since then. Yet, my clothing size has gone down.

  One wonders when this trend will end; it is already possible to buy a size 00. Eventually, will we all be sized in varying numbers of zeros, I wonder?

• bean
  March 25th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

  I’m absolutely sick of the new misuse of the term curvy. Curvy means not angular, it does not mean 40 pounds overweight. Heidi Klum is curvy; Oprah is just fat.

• Moodindigo
  March 26th, 2008 at 4:15 am

  @Sunny

  I would have thought that the apostrophe before the word “Teen” is perfectly okay if the word isn’t in common usage the way it is in the USA (it’s not that common in the UK yet) today. ‘Teen is short for sixteen (or seventeen, or eighteen, etc).

  What is offensive is the capitalisation. If it is an abbreviation of sixteen it should be a lower case “t”. But, it is in a heading so I’m not sure if you should apply grammar too stringently.

  @amanderpanderer

  Does that mean I can get a girl scout uniform for my girlfriend (who no longer has hers) in the states? Is that wrong?

• linabeena
  March 26th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

  What I find disturbing is that the drawing of the girl does not look ‘chubby’ at all. Is that what they considered big back then?

• firithlotiel
  March 28th, 2008 at 10:37 am

  Although they weren’t afraid to call girls chubby, I think when I was a kid I’d still cry over it…

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