Sigh. This image perfectly sums up what's wrong with women's clothing sizes.

Shopping for jeans can be a soul destroying task.

Once you figure out what style you’re after: straight, skinny, boyfriend, flared, cropped, ripped, maybe even asymmetric (???), you’re left to deal with an equally as confusing question: What size?

Because the likelihood of picking ‘your size’ off the shelf, trying them on and having them fit perfectly is… zero.

That just does not happen.

Because jean sizing is confusing, inconsistent and usually downright wrong.

Nothing has presented this as accurately as a photo by Twitter user Chloe Martin, who shared an image of seven pairs of jeans.

Seven pairs of jeans that are all labelled size 12, but vary in size so dramatically it’d be comical if it didn’t make jean shopping such a god damn painful experience.

Behold:

Incase you’ve ever wondered why women get so frustrated with our clothing sizes – every pair of jeans pictured, is a size 12 pic.twitter.com/V88JAPQZTI

— c (@chloemmx) March 8, 2019

Chloe followed up to say that bizarrely, the bottom pair of jeans fit her perfectly while the second pair from the top are too small – even though they appear bigger.

This makes precisely no sense and ugggh, what did we do to deserve this?

Her tweet clearly resonated because it quickly went viral, receiving more than 236k likes in three days.

That’s a heck of a lot of women with shopping horror stories to share.

I remember years ago a friend and I bought the same trousers from H&M in the same size. Mine were too big and hers were too small so we swapped! Ridiculous. I just want to go shopping and not take the same item to try on in 3 different sizes!

— Lindsay Dickinson (@L1nds) March 10, 2019

This is tragic, one pair is a size 4 and one pair is a size 10.. no difference at all pic.twitter.com/IXlI8LXrdG

— Jade???? (@Jadeelouuisee) March 10, 2019

the other day I wore a pair of size 4 jeans with a size L jacket and a size XS top and it all fit

— Jessica Langer, PhD (@DrJessicaLanger) March 10, 2019

Women’s pant sizes are SO arbitrary in comparison to men’s. Men: “I’m a 34×34”. Women: “I’m a 28 Short in Levi’s, a 10 Regular in American Eagle, a 12 in H&M and a 6 in JCrew.”

— Lora Marie Hlavsa (@loramariehlavsa) March 10, 2019

Yep. Added to the fun is when none of the sizes are right. Trying on 12 in pair of jeans which were too tight to be comfortable. Tried on 14 which were too big and I could get them on without undoing button or zip

— Kirsty at The Overflowing Library (@overflowingklc) March 10, 2019

And it gets worse the larger the size, except the options are fewer.

— LutherLiz (@Lutherliz) March 10, 2019

Ugh. Yes. The clothes in my closet range in size so drastically. It’s annoying. I hate shopping online for this very reason. There is also an emotional component because it makes you feel like shit when the label says your normal size, but you can’t get the jeans on your ass.

— S.K. Bledsoe (@sbledso_e) March 10, 2019

Chloe spoke to Metro.co.uk to reiterate how frustrating it is to find such large variations in sizing between stores (and sometimes even within the same store). She said she was concerned about the negative impact it can have on women.

“A lot of high street stores target young women to buy their clothes and they’re giving young women the impression that they need to go up a size when in reality it’s the store’s fault,” she said.

“There doesn’t seem to be an ideal size 12 or any other size because from the picture we can all see clearly that they are totally different.”

Brands need to ensure consistency across their sizing – that way, we would finally stop needing to take three pairs of jeans in three different sizes into the changing room.

How good would that be?