As she tried on the first shirt Hermione wondered for a moment what the other Hogwarts Houses actually thought of each other. Stereotypes were rife, of course, but just because every Slytherin they've interacted with has fit the mold of 'evil in training' doesn't mean they all actually were. If Harry's grandparents really turned out to have been in Slytherin she didn't see how that could be the case.
As a House they were supposed to be ambitious and cunning, though Malfoy's only ambition seemed to be to swim through a bin of his father's money like a billionaire duck and he had all the cunning of a brick wall. And she knew not all Gryffindors were brave and true knights in shining armor standing up for what's right, even if it's hard. If Dumbledore himself wasn't enough evidence of that, one of the worst people she'd ever heard of came not from Slytherin but Gryffindor. Betraying a lifelong friend and their family to their deaths for your own personal gain was a horrible thing to do, but it's precisely what Sirius Black had done and it was only by chance Harry had survived.
The first shirt was quickly discarded for being too short though looking at her ill-named training bra it wasn't as snug as she'd hoped. Hermione knew she shouldn't care about her appearance; she should be judged on her own merits based on what she could do, not who she was, who her parents were, or what she looked like. Thinking it didn't stop there from being this other element as well though simply because she thought it shouldn't be there.
It also didn't help that the other girls were the ones so often doing the judging, like it was some sort of race and if you weren't speeding to the finish line at all times then you were dead last and failed by default. By the end of the term Lavender had already started doing "exercises" to enhance her bust, spurred on by Susan Bones of Hufflepuff being an early bloomer. Only Parvati thought it might help.
Intra- and intersexual selection she had learned it was called, when she'd finally gotten the courage to ask her mother for a bra this summer - not that she really needed it at the moment when they wore a sweater over their shirts as a part of their uniform. Either way it was something she didn't think her father would be able to handle - especially not after hearing about Harry. As frustrating as doing anything with her mother was, sometimes there were benefits to how clinical she could be about things.
It didn't soothe matters at all though to learn that in some ways they really were engaged in that kind of competition. Human beings, both males and females, had evolved to judge the fitness of themselves and each other based on their appearance and perceived desirability as mating partners, and fighting against two hundred thousand years of evolution purely because you think it shouldn't be that way was only going to have a nominal effect at most.
While her mother's sentiments helped form many of the building blocks for her notions of gender equality, they were equally good at knocking holes in them again. Hermione supposed her mother would call that 'realism'; she called it disappointing.
Still, she tried to remind herself that if appearances were really all that important then there wouldn't be a witch or wizard who didn't look like supermodels, but if altering your appearance like that was something they hadn't even thought of - like having a tag in your clothes with standard sizes or paying for postage - then she certainly wasn't going to give them the idea. Then she'd be the one responsible for everyone having to keep up the charade or be ostracized, and she'd go from being about average-looking to the ugliest girl in the country overnight when she refused to go along with it.
The second shirt was better; a little loose, but it should be good enough to last the year, which would mean the third would probably feel like she was wearing a tent. She quickly removed it and retrieved her periwinkle top, putting the uniform shirts back on their hangers and handing them back over the door.
"You find one you like," Marjorie asked as she came over, "or did you need some more?"
"The second one's good," she answered.
"Did you need-?"
"No," Hermione quickly cut in, knowing there was only one thing the curly-headed shop assistant who seemed to enjoy embarrassing people would ask about at that point.
"-Socks?"