Welcome to
A Dictionary of Dress Sizes!
What is it?
A Dictionary of Dress Sizes website is an interactive and ongoing dialogue on body image between women who choose to participate. The next page: The Questions, asks you 12 questions relating to your experiences with clothing and body/beauty ideas and issues. These 12 questions will be updated periodically, feel free to answer each new set of questions!
Why did you start this project?
I grew up with issues around my body image. Issues I held on to for years until I felt very very small inside. Issues I never told the truth about. One day, I started to think about why that is and what was happening because of it. It seemed I had stacked these issues up one after another like a wall between myself and other women.
Suspecting I was not alone, I decided to write and mail a questionnaire about body image and beauty to 100 women. The 60 replies I got in return astounded me with their poignancy, their similarities and their wisdom. What was also amazing was how reading these answers made me feel...both about myself and about others.
My hope is that women will continue to answer my questionnaire so that this website becomes a dialogue between women and begins to spread the same sense of openness that I felt upon receiving those original answers in the mail. I've learned dialogue can be a path to change, a path toward connectedness.
As for me, I'm now writing a book about my experiences and this project. Responses you make on this website may be selected for use as either source or copy for that book project, and will be used anonymously. (More on this and more about me in the FAQ's page.)
It's my intention to share this experience with as many women as possible. I invite you to answer the questionnaire and please forward the link to this website to any women you know.
Thank you!
Sandra