You put a LOT of work into your body, and it shows in your big, bulky calves and biceps. After all of that effort, being able to buy some casual clothes for yourself shouldn't be such a chore, but it often is. There seems to be an ideal body type that the clothing industry makes its products for, and if you don't have that body type, then you're stuck wearing clothes that fit you awkwardly or don't fit you at all. It isn't fair.
Unfortunately, this isn't limited to people with athletic bodies. Did you know the pant size for the average woman in the United States is between 16 and 18? Why is it, then, that all of the models for the most popular and well-known clothing brands are wearing a size 4, 2, or 0?
For over 100 years, the ideal woman has been tiny, and the ideal man has been big but not too big, muscular but not too muscular, and lean but not too lean. And because these are the bodies we're trained to desire and strive for, the clothing market only makes its products for those bodies. Don't get us wrong: some people have these ideal body types, but the truth is that they are few and far between, and the reason they have them probably has more to do with genetics than anything else.
Big people can't find casual clothes for them because most clothing manufacturers are more concerned with promoting the ideal body type than they are with making clothes for the people who exist.
At the end of the day, ESPECIALLY if you're an athlete who works as hard as you play, the problem isn't you--it's the society you live in. We need clothes that are as diverse in size as real, live people. Even if every single person ate the same things and did the same workouts, we would all have different body types. Our differences should be celebrated, not dismissed, ignored, or criticized. Let's all go out into the world and try to make it a more inclusive place.
