This evening, I realized I needed some business shirts for a trip next week to London. I duly set off for the mall and Marks & Spencers. On arrival, I realized that I had no idea what size I needed! I managed to find a friendly assistant who measured me….. She told me 43 to 44 collar size. It was only when I started to look at said shirts that I made the realization that I am actually quite big! Firstly, almost every shirt I liked didn’t have anything bigger than a 42 or – even worse – was ‘slim fit’.
At this stage I need to ask – who the hell wears slim fit? Suddenly, everything is slim fit. Slim fit shorts, T-shirts and even trousers. Let’s understand each other – slim fit don’t fit me.
I thought perhaps I’d look at a sports coat and trousers too while there. It took me a while to find the size I was – 58. Frankly, there were very few this big and those that were, didn’t seem to fit me – too short mainly. Then I tried trousers – 38/36? I couldn’t find any but here at least, I seem to be not too far off average as waists go up to 48.
After spending an hour going through all of this and even trying a few items on, I had to ask myself did I get big or are men smaller and strangely shaped these days? Maybe its Czech men that are small and strangely shaped?
Now having said that, I am around 6′ 3″ or 191ish cm and I weigh a bit over 100kg (that is a hell of a lot of pounds so I won’t bother telling you how many). I do carry a fee kg around the middle but I’m working on it (again). Maybe I am a big man but I don’t look fat, huge or somehow out of the usual. But let’s face facts, according to the sizes and fits in M&S, men are smallish – maybe 5’8″ with small chests and even smaller waists down to the belt line where they are quite wide with short legs. That would be my conclusion based on the clothing sizes stocked here…. I don’t know anyone who looks like that!
So are men smaller these days or am I just big?
Maybe a bit of both.