ahhh yes we're back to the size issue. it's all a game out there. i recently visited the metropolitan museum of modern art and saw the american woman exhibit. good grief! how the heck did anyone wear those "vintage" clothes anyway? ridiculously small waists kept in check with whale-bone girdles. we have changed remarkably in the past 50 years. we're taller and we now represent a multi-racial population with many different body shapes and body fat distributions. the brickhouse body you're talking about was closer to the big screen images of the golden age of movie stars who represented. 01% of the population out there. yet women aspired to those bodies. sizing today is a joke. one woman could easily wear 3-4 different sizes depending upon which store and designer she chose. many clothing companies seem to be downgrading sizes (a true size 12 is now marked 10) and by doing so making women feel better about themselves guaranteeing a sale. forget standard sizes. it's a mish mash. just show up and buy what fits.
whatever happened to measurements 36 24 36 defining the perfect body?