Nothing fits anymore ? not our clothes, not our cars, not our airline seats, not even our coffins. It's no longer possible to ignore the elephant in the living room.

Have you noticed how much smaller clothes have gotten now that everything's made in China? The seats on airplanes seem narrower, too. And what normal person could be comfortable shoehorned into one of those itty-bitty little compact cars? It's like the whole world is shrinking lately.

No, of course it isn't us. Hey, we aren't fat, we're just ... er ... big-boned? Our ballooning national waistline has caught up with us: SizeUSA, the first major study of the size and shape of Americans since the Second World War, was completed earlier this month, and its long-awaited results have finally been published.

Some previous attempts to measure America have suffered from inexactitude: Where you put the tape measure and how tight you pull it can throw off your results. And then there's the question of whom you measure in the first place. Many American manufacturers of women's clothes have continued to base their sizing on measurements collected to create uniforms for recruits to the Second World War WACs and WAVES ? women who tended to be younger and in better shape than the general female population. (Not to mention that they lived at a time when fast food had yet to be invented, and most families still had fewer automobiles than they had family members.)

[TC?, the North Carolina technology company that designed and performed the SizeUSA survey, took these factors into account. They used a white-light laser that took 200-some measurements on each subject, and did it with admirable consistency. And they measured the bodies of more than 10,000 Americans, scientifically selected to give an accurate, unbiased picture of the American physique.

The picture is, needless to say, not a pretty one. But it does explain why half the population ? as retail consultants Kurt Salmon Associates have reported ? complain that the clothes on the racks in stores just don't fit them. It's because we've grown.

The bad news isn't just that we're bigger than we used to be, although we are. It's that our waistlines are expanding farther and faster than the rest of us. Not that this comes as a surprise. Last spring, for instance, The Wall Street Journal reported that people at the Federal Aviation Administration were worried that the government's assumption that the average flier weighs 180 pounds in summer and 185 in winter (including clothes and carry-ons) might need to be revised upward, given that nearly a third of the population is considered obese (up from a quarter in 1994).

A small plane that crashed the previous January in Charlotte, N.C., killing 21 people, had been found to be carrying within 100 pounds of its maximum take-off weight. And just last month the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that in some cases airlines may have to start weighing passengers and their baggage again, as they did in the early days of flight, instead of just estimating their weights.

Last summer the Centers for Disease Control projected that ? presumably thanks to rising obesity rates ? one of every three Americans born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes. Also last summer, a group of large employers (Ford, Honeywell, Pepsico, General Mills, et al.) announced a campaign to fight fat among employees. Ford's health-care director told The New York Times that weight-related ailments cost American employers $12 billion a year. A month later, a study published in The American Journal of Public Health pinned some of the blame on the design of suburbs, where you have to drive everywhere ? and because there aren't any sidewalks, you're likely to be hit by a car if you do take a walk. The study found that suburbanites tended to weigh six pounds more than people who live in more walkable cities.

In September the National Research Council of the National Academies reported that obesity isn't only a people problem: A quarter of American cats and dogs are also obese.

A story in The New York Times last autumn reported on the plight of bereaved families who learn, when they go shopping for caskets, that Mom won't fit in the standard two-foot-wide size. Not that anybody wants to come right out and say so. One funeral director said he tells families, 'Mom's not going to look comfortable in that casket', and they generally know what he means ? especially if Mom weighed 500 pounds. When an Indiana company aptly named Goliath Casket opened in the late 1980s, it sold one triple-wide (44 inches across) casket a year, according to the story. Now they ship out four or five triple-wides a month.

It isn't only coffins that are expanding to fit their occupants.

A story in The New York Times in November reported on the struggles of hospitals to catch up with the size of their morbidly obese patients by investing in oversize wheelchairs, bigger and stronger hospital beds, higher-capacity scales, heavy-duty operating tables, and supersize waiting room chairs.

In December a Philadelphia Inquirer story pointed to increased stroller use as a factor in paediatric obesity. Parents are buying bigger and better strollers to accommodate older children because pushing the kid in a stroller is faster than letting the kid walk. And who has time?

Anyway, it's no surprise that the SizeUSA numbers show we've gotten bigger. But thanks to the study's design, its findings are more specific than that.

Project director Jim Lovejoy told The Wall Street Journal that "we're definitely getting heavier, and it's primarily in the waist ? and the hips follow the waist".

It's a major reason so-called "standard" sizes don't fit actual people. Your standard size 16 ? not that there really is such a thing, since every manufacturer uses a different standard ? is made for a woman whose waist is 7.5 inches to 8.5 inches smaller than her bust. In fact, according to the survey, the average American woman has a 35-inch waist, only 6.5 inches smaller than her 41.5-inch bust. (If your waistband feels a little tight, you have plenty of company.)

Another reason clothes don't fit is that they're cut to fit a body shaped like an hourglass: top and bottom close to the same size, separated by a narrow waist. In fact, the survey found, the classic hourglass shape has morphed into a pear. (Which won't surprise any woman who's faced the choice of buying a dress that fit in the bust but was tight in the hips or one that fit on the bottom but bagged on top.

Lovejoy's study also found ? again unsurprisingly ? that we gain weight as we age. The men and women in the survey who were between the ages of 56 and 65 measured three inches to five inches bigger in the waist and one inch to three inches bigger in the hips than those in the 18-to-25 age bracket. Which sounds deceptively benign. Suppose an 18-year-old with a 27-inch waist gains five inches by the time he reaches 60. He's still buying his Levis in size 32. (I wish I could say the same.)

Unfortunately, you might as well compare the physiques of apples and oranges. Here's the rub: Unless all those scare stories about the obesity epidemic are pipe dreams ? and you only have to check out the line at the local all-you-can-eat family-style buffet to know they aren't ? 18-year-olds are heftier today than the baby boomers were when they were 18. And most likely, the boomer who's about to retire with a 40-inch waist acquired it by adding considerably more than three to five inches to the waistline that accompanied him to sit-ins and be-ins and love-ins back in 1968. Which, unfortunately, suggests that today's beefy 18-year-olds can look forward to packing on considerably more than three to five inches over the next 40 years.

You can't tell any of that from the study. Lovejoy is quick to point out that the numbers tell us only about the people who were measured at the time they were measured. It tells what the bodies of 18-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 60-year-olds look like now. It doesn't say anything about what the 60-year-olds looked like 40 years ago, or what the 18-year-olds will look like 40 years from now. Which, luckily, is all clothing manufacturers need to know in order to make clothes to fit customers of all ages now, which is all they care about. (Though, if they're wise, they won't wait another half-century before they recheck the data.)

Lovejoy says response from the clothing industry has been "tremendous", with many major manufacturers and retailers sponsoring the study, and more ordering its final report. The good news is that, with all this reliable information in hand, there's a decent chance that the people who make our clothes will start making them to fit us instead of some vintage-1943 co-ed. Hey, if the folks who build coffins and operating tables and pool chairs can fit their expanding customers, why can't clothing manufacturers?