- Joined
- Sep 20, 2016
A big part of it is that fat chicks see Torrid as "their" store, catering only to them. Normal-sized women can shop just about anywhere else in the mall and find trendy clothes that fit, but Torrid (and, to a lesser extent, Lane Bryant) are the only two stores that cater exclusively to fatties. So it's a retail "safe space," if you will, where fatgirls get a chance to feel important and catered to.
But Torrid's a clothing retailer, there to make a profit, and the young women with the most discretionary income to spend on clothes, and who actually buy the most clothes, are not the mega-fats above size 3X or 24-26. If, as I've seen alleged, the average woman in the US wears a size 14/16--the largest straight size/smallest plus size--then Torrid's missing out on a lot of potential sales by not catering to merely "smallfat" or "in-betweenie" women who wear a size 10-12. So they're now offering clothes to some women on the left side of the bell curve, and many of those on the right side are going all Trigglypuff over it.
But here's another thing: from what I've heard, Torrid's sizing tends to be generous. And if that's the case, a Torrid size 10 is akin to a 12 or 14 in straight-size brands, and an average-height woman who wears a 12 or 14 is pretty darned chubby. If she's really short, she may actually be classifiable as obese. So no, by offering extended smaller sizes, Torrid's not catering to "skinny bitches" with normal BMIs--not unless they're six feet tall, and don't mind shopping at a fatgirl store.
Another thing: Torrid's market is teenagers and young women. If you're 16-20 years old and already big enough to get into Torrid's size 10, chances are very good that you're just going to get fatter, because girls who are fat as teenagers generally tend to stay fat--and get fatter--as adults. So eventually, those "privileged smallfats" who can still shop at regular stores are going to be actual fatties who have to shop plus-size. So why not start establishing brand loyalty to Torrid now, before they blow up, while they can still get excited at "only" being a size 10, and the skinniest girl in the store?
Sure, the current size 3x-and-up fatties will howl, but frankly, they're not Torrid's most profitable customers, and where else are they going to shop? They're a captive audience. So Torrid really doesn't have to do more than pay lip service to them, while doing what it needs to do to ensure profitability.
Oh--and one last thing: Tumblr fatties howling about the use of a hot, slender model in Torrid's ad campaign, and insisting upon a corpulent, cottage-cheesy one in the name of "representation" is a joke. They complain all the time about size-12 "plus size" models with hourglass figures; chunky Ashley Graham is considered too skinny by these folks to be modeling clothes for fatties. But here's the thing: fashion advertising and merchandising is aspirational. It presents clothing in an idealized way, on bodies chosen to make the clothes look good--because it's about showing the clothes to best advantage, and not the body they're on. Clothes that look bad on the model, that draw attention to every bulge, don't sell, because customers don't want to see reality. They don't want to be shown ahead of time how shitty theiy're actually going to look; they long for that magic garment that will transform their lumpy, sagging, overfed body into something approximating sexy, elegant, and beautiful. And yes, as size range of 10-26 is going to be shown on a size 10, and not a 22, because nobody actually wants to look like a size 22 or larger. They just don't.
