title: Garment sizes in perception of body size.
abstract: This paper reports an experimental investigation of the effect of garment size on perceived body size. The perceived body sizes of three Chinese men (thin, medium, and obese build) wearing different sizes of white T-shirts were assessed using Thompson and Gray's 1995 Nine-figural Scale in 1 (thinnest) to 9 (obese) grade and a newly-proposed method. Within the limit of commercially available T-shirt sizes, for thin and medium persons, perceived body sizes are bigger when wearing T-shirts of larger sizes. For an obese person, however, wearing a large size T-shirt tends to make him look thinner. The study also showed that the newly proposed comparative method is more reliable in comparing body size perception but without measuring the magnitude of the change in body-size grade. The figural scale and the comparative method can be complementary.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, China.
authors.forename: Jintu
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Newton
authors.forename: Lilian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.forename: Fu
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001824:Body Constitution; D001828:Body Image; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012858:Size Perception; D014796:Visual Perception