My sister came into the store on a Saturday in July wearing gym shorts that had clearly died about four washes prior. Elastic-less. Hem hanging off on one side like they’d been run over by a lawnmower. She breezed past the “women’s section” – sizable, but somewhat nonexistent in most big and tall stores – and went straight for a bin of men’s cargo shorts on clearance. Picked a pair off the stack, held them up, looked at me and asked “these would actually fit right, wouldn’t they? “
I froze.
Which is saying something, because I do not freeze in this store. I have answers for everything in this place. So instead of going with my gut, I did what any lifelong terribly-employed-retailer does when they don’t trust their gut; I whipped out the tape measure.
First thing nobody tells you when you find yourself browsing uncomfortably in the men’s section is this: gender doesn’t matter when it comes to clothing size. Well… shorts specifically, in this case. A waistband isn’t judging you. It’s measuring your actual waist measurement and comparing it to the measurements of the shorts in front of you, and men’s shorts are constructed with very different presumptions about the body than women’s shorts. It’s not that men and women are shaped so disparately that one group is physically incapable of wearing the other group’s clothing, but men’s and women’s clothes got built around two different sets of average measurements way back when nobody really cared about this topic, and no one’s gone back to change the logic to reflect reality since.
The thing that matters when you’re comparing sizes, and the things that sound like they do but don’t
When measured with the tape, not whichever euphemism the size chart wants to use for it, my sister’s waist was 32 inches. That particular brand of cargo short in a men’s medium runs a 32 inch to 34 inch waist. Good, the numbers match up so far. But where those shorts sit on the body, called the rise and measuring the distance from the crotch seam vertically up to the waistband, was eleven and a half inches. Most women’s shorts in her usual size are around nine inches, sometimes nine and a half. It’s not just a negligible difference either. That extra couple inches is what takes shorts from “here’s where they’re supposed to sit” to “how do I make these shrink?” which is word-for-word what she exclaimed halfway through her explanation, loud enough for the guy browsing two racks down to overhear and chuckle.
This is the part of the process people gloss over when they think they’re already given you the answer in one sentence. Of course women can wear men’s shorts if they fit. Waist measurements can easily match up between men’s and women’s clothing. But rise, and to a lesser extent the taper through the thigh, are what’s going to make or break the entire experience for the wearer. Every pair of men’s shorts drafted for a narrower seat is going to fit differently on someone with more pronounced hips and waist, not because it’s impossible but because they’re drafting their patterns around someone else’s body shape. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it. It means measure the damn shorts before you decide to trust that a tag sewn into some cloth vaguely knows your body better than you do. Advice I give male customers all day, every day and never thought to apply to myself until my sister forced me to.
I spent twenty minutes explaining to a man a few months ago that “large” in this particular brand of shorts was never going to work for him simply because he “usually wear large everywhere.” Pulled out the tape on those too. That “large” he knew fit him was a 34 flat waist, no stretch. On an actual men’s large who wore a 38 shirt. Same issue on both sides of the gender spectrum. Clothes tags are lying to you. The tape measure is not.
Wait, so can she or can she not?
She bought the cargo shorts. Went home, got them altered in the rise for nineteen dollars. Nineteen dollars is less than most women’s shorts even run at the stores she normally frequents for that quality of material. She wears them now. Nobody kicked her out at the door. Hell didn’t swallow her.
What happened that day wasn’t gender statements bending in the wild. It was a fit issue as old as clothing itself and solved with one of the oldest fixes in dressing folk. The same problem I correct fifteen times a day on the other side of the store when someone’s inseam is miles away from their waist size according to whatever “standard” the brand using said measurements chose to go with that season. Women’s shorts and men’s shorts are built with entirely different assumptions about what parts of the body women have more of and what parts men have more of but can work on whichever body they need to if the measurements actually match up or if you’re willing to drop twenty bucks to make them match.
I personally believe the answer to “can women wear men’s shorts” is the same as I tell anybody who asks me if a “relaxed fit” label means what they think it means.
Stop letting that tag tell you the story of what will or will not fit you on your body. It gives you a starting point yes, but a hell of a bad one at that sometimes. The waist measurement can match up perfectly and it might still not sit right, or that same waist measurement can look wonky on paper but fit you better than anything else you try on that’s specifically marketed for your body to wear. Until you measure the garment against your own body standing in front of you, you don’t know. Not the size chart. Not your best guess based on what other brands you do fit in. Not what section of the store you’re technically supposed to buy clothing from.
My sister’s cargo shorts fit her better than mine fit me and mine were from the men’s section too. Wear whatever you like, regardless of what section it’s folded on.
Terry works a menswear shop floor in Newcastle and is a big and tall specialist himself. He writes about sizing that holds up, measures things before he believes the label, and has strong opinions about the phrase relaxed fit.
