They've gotten into the op shops. FUCK. I buy 90% of my clothes from op shops/thrift stores/charity shops etc. Most of the clothes I find are practically "new" quality (i.e. It has been worn one time but that was in 1994, etc) they last ages after I buy them, and best of all, are dirt cheap. Until today, I have managed to majorly avoid vanity sizing this way because many of the clothes accepted onto the shelves, despite being largely unworn, are actually quite a bit older. Today I found a red cross shop and went in to see if they had anything nice. I go to the rack marked "lady's tops" and immediately realize I've made the mistake of finding the plus size section. If I need fabric or embroidery or accents for a project sometimes I'll chop out pieces of plus size tarps, but I don't make a habit of drowning in the fabric on an average day. These tops were MASSIVE, I remember when a women's xxs would have looked like I'd tried to squeeze into a toddler's shirt, but some of these look almost like the medium/large spectrum I usually pick from. Wow, plus sizes are fucked up. So, naturally, I walk to the other side of the shop to the other rack of tops. Well now I am confused, because these are even tarpier than the last rack. Seriously, EVERYTHING is huge!!! I go round to every rack in the store and found that about 60% of the "normal" sized clothes were vanity sized to fuck. How did all these fat clothes get into my thrift stores??? I'm trying to figure out how this has happened. I don't often consider fats to be generous or environmentally conscious enough to donate old clothes, could there have been an empathetic breakthrough in the haes/fa? Nope, looks like their website still encourages child abuseity. Has enough time finally passed that the brunt of vanity sizing has infiltrated the donations? Many old clothes sit in the backs of closets for years before making it to a donation box, and even then it can take months to years for donation piles to be organized and for new stock to be put on the racks. So, shit, that means this will be the new norm if we've finally caught up to the sizing trend. Or, more likely, these aren't "old clothes" at all. It's not SUPER unusual to see one or two nice brand new things on every other rack. People donate things they ordered online and changed their minds about, they donate bad gifts that didn't fit or suit their tastes, and some thrift stores will even liquidate and resell rejected overstock from other businessess. But this many new clothes? This many, fat, new clothes? I think fatasses are getting so much fatter every year, that they are donating new purchases faster than they can wear them. People are more likely to donate than throw out an item that was costly or recently purchased because they attribute more value to it. It fits the fatty profile to donate because they want to feel like they've reconciled the cost, rather than for charity or environmental motivations. It's the best explanation. A big fat heifer of arguable gender buys a mini tarp, wears it for a haes instagram post, then puts it back into the closet. One month later, it finds the mini tarp, and tries to wear it again. Alas, so many pounds of cheesy potatoes have been added to the gut of the beast that the mini tarp no longer fits, and so it sends it to the salvation army on the corner and buys a medium tarp. A month later, the same thing happens, now it needs a large tarp. Then an extra large. And all those nasty tarps get stuck on my racks because the tarp says "parachute" but the label says "small."