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The fascination with this fact about Marilyn Monroe's dress size is not its literal truthfulness per se, but the implication it carries: that our standards of feminine pulchritude have become so extreme that the woman who has been idolized as the world's premier sex symbol for half a century would be considered chunky or even fat by modern standards. (Conversely, some of today's celebrities seem to be fond of invoking the fact that Marilyn wore a size 16 dress as a means of asserting that they themselves are, if not thin, in better shape than the renowned Marilyn Monroe was.) Examples: Marilyn may (at times) have been a little heavier than today's ultra-svelte models, but the notion that she was fat (even by today's standards) is based on misinformation or misunderstanding. Part of the misconception over Marilyn's dress size is caused by the fact women's dress sizing has changed over the years (i.e., today's size 10 dress is smaller than the size 10 dress of fifty years ago), so what might have been labeled a size 16 dress in Marilyn Monroe's era can't be directly compared with today's size 16 dress. Also, many women have difficulty finding dresses that fit all portions of their frames comfortably, and therefore a woman with a proportionally larger bust, waist, or hip measurement might have to buy a larger-sized dress to accommodate that one measurement, but that dress wouldn't necessarily be reflective of her overall size. As well, it's difficult to accurately size the clothing Marilyn wore from her film costumes because most of that wardrobe was specifically tailored to fit her particular figure and was designed to showcase her body, not to provide the covering typical of standard clothing. In 2009, fashion features editor Sara Buys had an opportunity to try on some items from a collection of Marilyn Monroe’s costumes and clothes and reported:
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