I understand your claims. It will be interesting to see if eventually the market will segment itself in Israel the way you claim it is segmented in other places. This will mean that the “General” cloths stores will be out of fashion, so to say. We’ll see very specialized stores for different market segments - i.e. Youth, Businessman, leisure, size segmentation and the like ( although “mL” have a very large line of “normal” sized garments nowadays).

In this case, to prove your claim, we’ll have to see some kind of reverse correlation between women clothes stores to obese women in the population to the same ration in men. That remains to be seen.

I’m not so sure about your claim as to the role of the industry. I feel that the obesity epidemic feeds upon the “legitimization” given to obese individuals by the clothing industry thus creating a vicious circle that feed itself. When you promote stores for obese individuals you make them feel ok, just like another speciality group in the population i.e. “In recent years a number of stores for youth, obese and sports clothing has been opened”. So, I believe the claim that the clothing industry is just a supplier is not as concrete as you believe it is.

As you clearly have much more informed arguments than mine, and the fact that I have no time at all available currently to establish my arguments to the level that you have done, I declare your theory as the true and relevant one.

“… research shows that larger women are still not spending a lot of money on plus-size clothing. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that the middle-aged bracket in general spends less money on clothes than the younger age bracket, and that the middle-age bracket is less influenced by seasonal trends than the younger bracket. In addition, larger women are also less likely to make impulse purchases.”

a question still remains rather the same phenomenon exists among men. I still believe that not, however I have no time to prove or refute it.

Regarding the third explanation, I strongly disagree with you. The only fact that I need to prove it is that the plus-size garment sector, is about 25-30% of the total women’s retail market in the USA, UK and Germany. This is also the proportion of the overweight women in those countries. The conclusion is that the women clothing market has separated into two different markets, regular-size and plus-size clothes. So your basic mistake is in referring to some stores as “regular”. I claim that there is no such thing, there are two types of shops which sell different types of products, and that why you don’t encounter this kinds of clothes too often in the “regular” shops. I’m willing to accept that this process is not yet completed in Israel.

Regarding the advertising, I do not agree again. I’ve seen numerous commercials of plus-size clothes for women (ml, isha-isha, onot …) but I have yet seen one of those for men.

The effect of the obesity epidemic in recent years along with the large size of the women clothing market made it split in two. In general, the clothing industry is just a supplier which reflects the market needs.

You are trying to explain this topic using market segmentation, i.e. explaining that what I have observed is trivial because the clothes for fuller women are sold in speciality stores because of the sheer size of the women’s clothes market. I’d like to offer an argument to contradict that.

The stores I’m talking about are general clothes stores, that are intended for all the cross sections of the public. I’ve visited the “Mashbir”, “Golf”, “Zara” (which are a bit better) and others. I believe that these stores serve the largest part of the market by far, this way speciality stores account for only a small part of the market. What I’m trying to say here is that all in all, what I have observed does describe the market.

Furthermore, as I stated before, if we look at the advertising of it all we’ll see a big difference. It’s as if women are supposed to stay slim through their lives, while men are allowed to grow overweight,

The real question is, does the textile industry only describe the reality, or does it create it?

A kind of the chicken and the egg question.

1) The obvious assumption would be that the supply suits the demand so the fact that there are more overweight men than women (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071022163840.htm) can serve as an explanation, at least a partial one.

2) I can suggest a hypothesis that thinner women buy more clothes, while there is no such phenomenon among men. If my guess has something to do with the reality, the gap between big sized clothes soled to men and women widens further more, in favor of the men.

3) Finally, the most significant reason, in my opinion, is that women’s clothes market is much bigger than the men’s one. Accordingly, there is much more place for specialization among women’s clothes retailers. As a result there are more shops which focus on big size clothes for women, rather than for men. That why we see more of those clothes in regular shops for men, while women’s big size clothes are usually sold in special places and thus less visible in regular shops.

In my opinion, the lack in correlation that is happening now is due to strong factors - such as the sub-prime crisis - that are affecting housing prices in the U.S. I think that if you look into price indices for EU or Asia, you’ll find that prices haven’t gone down, but are rising steeply.

The grammer mistakes, typos etc… are not material. They don’t even cost you points in the exam.

Points taken about the style, and when I reread the essay I’ve also noticed it was too general.

It’s morning, I hope it’s *constructive* criticism.