The 5 Stages of Grief When Your PPE Doesn't Come in Your Size
Nobody prepares you for the first time you show up to a job site and find out your safety vest comes in three sizes: large, extra large, and good luck.
You go through something. A journey. A process of emotional reckoning that psychologists have tried to explain for decades, and which women in the trades have been living quietly every time they open a supply closet and see nothing remotely meant for them.
We are talking, of course, about grief.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five stages. She was a psychiatrist studying terminal illness. She could not have known she was also describing what happens when a woman in construction tries to find PPE that fits. And yet, here we are.
Stage 1: Denial
"I'm sure it'll be fine."
You hold up the vest. It's an XL. You are not an XL. But the tag says "adjustable fit" and you are a problem-solver, so you put it on.
It hangs off one shoulder. The chest sits somewhere around your stomach. The reflective strips, which are supposed to wrap your torso for maximum visibility, are doing a great job of reflecting light from your hips.
You tighten the side tabs as far as they go. You tell yourself this is fine. You tell yourself lots of people wear their vests like this. You tell yourself the guys aren't looking at you like you're wearing a life jacket at a pool party.
You are in denial. This is normal. This is stage one.
Stage 2: Anger
This is when you start asking questions nobody on your crew has a good answer for.
Why does this only come in men's sizes? Who decided that "unisex" meant "designed for men and technically wearable by others if they give up"? Why is there a Small listed on the website that has been out of stock since 2019 and apparently will remain out of stock until the sun burns out?
You go online. You search "women's safety vest." You find vests that are pink. You find vests that are described as "fitted" but are just the same men's vest with a slightly different cut at the hem. You discover the classic "shrink it and pink it" approach to product design, where gear built for men is simply made smaller, given a brighter color, and marketed as women's PPE. You find a lot of vests that are $12 and made of what appears to be a single layer of wishful thinking.
You close the laptop. You open it again. You close it harder.
The anger is valid. The anger is healthy. The anger is also not going to fit you into that vest, which is still waiting for you on the break room table where you left it in a small act of protest.
Stage 3: Bargaining
This is the creative stage. This is where the real problem-solving happens.
Maybe if you pin the shoulders it'll sit right. Maybe a belt over the vest would hold it in place. Maybe you can find a kids' large, because you saw someone suggest that online and you are not above it at this point. Maybe you can just wear the vest half-zipped and angle yourself toward traffic so the reflective strips are still technically visible. Maybe OSHA won't notice.
You try the safety pins. They work for about forty-five minutes before one comes loose and you spend the rest of the morning with a gap at your left shoulder that the wind finds personally offensive.
You try the belt. You look like you are wearing a costume. You remove the belt.
You consider the kids' large. It fits in the shoulders but the reflective strips now sit approximately at your collarbone, which meets approximately zero of the ANSI visibility requirements you actually care about.
You bargain for a while. It doesn't work. It never works. But you did get creative, and honestly, so has every woman in your position. The workarounds women have invented to make bad PPE functional could fill an engineering textbook. None of that makes it okay that the workarounds were ever necessary.
Stage 4: Depression
This is the quiet one.
This is driving home and thinking about how many small things you had to manage today that your male coworkers didn't. The vest that didn't fit. The gloves you borrowed because yours were on backorder indefinitely. The way you had to ask the supply manager three separate times to even look into women's sizing before he wrote it down, and then it didn't go anywhere.
It's not one thing. It's the accumulation. It's knowing this is Tuesday, and last Tuesday was the same, and next Tuesday will probably be the same unless something changes, and nothing seems to be changing very fast.
The industry is growing. Women are entering the trades in real numbers. And the supply closet still looks like it was stocked in 1987 by someone who never considered you'd show up.
It's a lot. It's okay to feel it.
Stage 5: Acceptance
Not the bad kind of acceptance. Not "this is fine and I'll learn to live with it."
The other kind. The kind where you stop waiting for the industry to figure it out and you go find the people who already did.
Because they exist now. Finally.
ARX built the Original Vest because we got through all four stages before this one and decided to do something about it. The vest is ANSI 107 Class 2 compliant, OSHA fit-ready, and built on women's measurements from the start. Not shrunken down. Not pink. Not "adjustable" in the way that means it adjusts to fit a man and sort of tolerates everyone else.
It has fitted shoulders. Real pockets. A double zipper. Reinforced seams. It was tested by women across industries until it actually worked.
Acceptance looks like not settling. Acceptance looks like finding gear designed for you and refusing to go back to safety pins and borrowed gloves.
You've earned it.
Shop the Original Vest at shoparxppe.com.