I can totally sympathize. I went from a US Men’s 9 to a 15 over the course of a summer. Usually, brick-and-mortar shoe stores only carry up to a 13. Now, I just order online, but back then the Internet wasn’t really a thing, and the concept of online shoe stores was ridiculous to most people. So, early teenaged me had to have my mom drive me 30 miles to the nearest store that sold outsized shoes, and these shoes were almost always ugly and weirdly shaped.
This is somehow worse though. I feel that the cutoff for large (or tall, or big-footed, or whatever) women is significantly lower than it is for men, and that there’s also some kind of value judgment associated with this. As in, the cutoff for requiring special stores must be an entire standard deviation lower. And women have to put up with this bullshit as well:
At my local Forbidden Planet store, the Black Widow shirt—the only shirt that featured her—only came in “girl’s cut,” a style I dislike wearing, and its largest size was laughable.
Not only is the top size not that big, but the merchandise is only available in the girliest styles possible.
Then there’s this shit:
When merchandise featuring men comes in every size—”male” and “female”—but something bearing a woman’s name is only sized for “women,” that is, these days, frankly unacceptable.
There are loads of men who want to buy merchandise featuring female superheroes but can’t. Way to drive away the women as well.
