As American women get fatter, the sizes they wear get smaller. Not the actual waistlines, but the size number assigned to it. Kate M. Jackson of the Boston Globe reports:

While Americans have statistically gotten larger, women's clothing has gotten smaller —— that is, if the numbers on the size labels are to be believed. It's no secret that retailers have been playing to women's vanity for years by downsizing the sizes on garment labels, but the practice has reached an extreme in recent months with the introduction of the sizes ''double zero" and ''extra, extra small." If vanity sizing continues on this path, analysts say, it is only a matter of time before clothing sizes are available in negative integers.

Wry and worth reading.