I Hate Bra Shopping

[azurelunatic]

There is, as I write this, a great glorious collective ranting session over in synecdochic's journal about the horrors of bras and bra shopping. I am in a right strop tonight.

I hate it so much.

Unless the internet possesses some sort of magical knowledge that's only on one website, I know how to measure for a motherfucking bra. Take the cloth tape measure and wrap it about one's chest, straight across the back, and under the tits. This is, in theory, your band size. This also assumes that upon compression with some architectural elastic, your body stays more or less put, and does not squish out from under, resulting in a strap that sags in directions it was never meant to fucking sag.

It also assumes that you can in fact hold your left tit clear with one hand, hold your right tit clear with your other hand, wrap the tape around yourself with your third hand, hold it up in the back to keep it from wandering with your fourth hand, and pull it tight enough to approximate a bra strap with the fifth hand.

... Has anyone seen my extra hands? I think I'm missing a few.


Then, of course, you measure yourself across the tits. Wearing your best-fitting bra, wrap the tape around yourself once more -- this time you'll only need three of your hands, hooray -- at the widest part of your bust. What? Your best-fitting bra still has your nipples down somewhere in the vicinity of your navel? What's the size of your best-fitting bra, then? No, when it was actually new? You could start there...

... what do you mean, you've been wearing cleverly knotted tank tops for over a year?!?!


So assuming you and your friend the Quaddie have accurately measured your tits, and that no one got hurt in the process (a near thing, with how I pitched the goddamn measuring tape out the window and then had to go retrieve it and apologize and also wash it off from the dog turd it landed in), now it's time to translate umpty inches band, umpty-plus-oh-god-you-have-to-be-kidding-me for cup, into a cup letter. A cup letter which will be something like consistent between bra manufacturers, right?

Ha. Aha. Ha. Ha.


So let's go to the store and try some on! ... To the high-end shop at the mall? ... ... To the dodgy specialist shop in the sketchy part of town??

At this size cup, it's specialist sellers, it costs a small fortune, and it's basically all mail-order. Oh yes. Let's order the nine most likely sizes and then do A/B testing to see which one causes the least searing pain by the end of 16 hours of gods-know-what. $450 plus shipping is a root canal of a price, and tank tops are ... really, they're pretty cheap. The knot's free.


But maybe I do cave and go to the shop. The little old lady there is a consummate professional, yes? She knows what to do with tits that are probably size J? She knows which bras are likely to fit? She doesn't humiliate me into speechless tears about any of the ways I fail to fit up to the frilly feminine ideal? She has actual knowledge about how to fit a bra, and not an hour of halfassed training provided by a bra seller that cares only about how many units are shifted and the markup they can demand?


Right now, my fear and loathing is talking. One shittily organized WordPress site is not actually going to help jack, and it's not telling me anything new. It sucks. It's sort of a comfort to know that I'm not alone, but oh god I hate everything, especially bras.

Comments

[ankaret]

You have all my sympathy. The problem with the 'measure for band, measure for cup size, convert inches to letters, try to remember which letters this particular brand doubles or skips for no damn reason' method is, as far as I can tell, that it was developed when bras were made of broadcloth and that since then and into the elastic age bra sizes have been quietly shifting this way and that like tall ships at high tide.

There was one model of bra that fit me perfectly in both cups and didn't dig in or poke me in the armpit with wires or any other Stupid Bra Trick. The bastards discontinued it.

[pickledginger]

And once you have a size - as if manufacturers paid any attention to their own posted measurements in any aspect of women's clothing - there is the shape issues to consider. All breasts are not shaped alike. Oh, add let's not forget the issue of separation.
*wonders how those.tank tops are cleverly knotted*

Good luck.

[elialshadowpine]

Also, be totally screwed if your breasts are different sizes.

Also, be totally screwed if you have fibro and have tender points at the bra strap line.

There are several reasons I don't wear bras regularly (theoretically, I am a B cup but given the sizing issues, who the fuck knows) and why I'm looking into getting a corset suitable for undergarment wear custom made.

[mfb]

I am also interested in these clever knots.

[asciident]

Ugh. At least while I'm still in university I can get away with just wearing a tank top underneath my shirt. I don't even bother to knot it.

[vass]

Right now, my fear and loathing is talking. One shittily organized WordPress site is not actually going to help jack, and it's not telling me anything new. It sucks. It's sort of a comfort to know that I'm not alone, but oh god I hate everything, especially bras.

YES YES YES.

I foolishly remembered that my bras are all worn-out or too small, and did a bit of online bra shopping. I ended up in tears.

If cismen typically needed bras, bras would be so much cheaper and better made. I would buy ALL my bras from the menswear section.

[elf]

Come to Escapade next year. There's a scheduled visit to the local lingerie/bra shop that does fittings and has an extensive range of sizes.

They don't use tape measures. They poke at your back, make "mm-hmm" noises, and whisk out three bras in similar sizes and say "try these one and we'll go from there." They do size J. And they don't treat people with size J tits like they're freaks.

(In the meantime... someone on my readlist or network--I forget--posted a link to an archived post about Size Chart Woes: The Naked Truth About Bra Sizes.)

And maybe it's time for a group of women to get together and start a custom bra company. With the right equipment, bras could probably be made at $50-70 each, and made absolutely to fit rather than off the rack.

[majoline]

That's a great article. And awesome information if I ever get enough money to travel anywhere.

[azurelunatic]

Put on tank top. Fold the bottom hem up under boobs in a comfortable and supportive position. From down the middle of the inside, grab the center of the bottom hem and pull up. Keep pulling (rearranging boobs sensibly) until there's a respectable long tail of fabric. Fold the tail over the front of the shirt, re-arranging sensibly all the way. It should start to look like a bra. Continue wrapping it around and find a place where you can slip the tail of fabric under itself, and pull tight.

The result should be custom-fitted and have a large lumpy knot between the tits, which doesn't work well with all shirts, but should be perfectly serviceable for just Around.

I have had good luck with sports shirts with "special wicking" fabric on sale in hideous colors, a little tighter than I normally wear, as they are stretchy and also deal with sweat well.

The knots occasionally fall out (I wash them knotted, so it's every couple months for me), but after you know the method, it is a smallish inconvenience to re-knot.

[azurelunatic]

*comments below*

[niqaeli]

The followup article is even better: Size Chart Woes: Fun With Math!. It goes into the math/geometry of why the 1"-per-cup difference does not actually contradict the cup size variances we see. (Someday I might actually draw up the pictures to illustrate that volume compounds things even more than area does -- also those pictures would probably help people understand why it's not half as simple as getting your right bra size measured; fit varies even between people whose measurements are the same and who are trying on consistently sized brands -- because boobs are 3D and not even remotely all the same volume for the same perimeter measurements.)

[azurelunatic]

ONE DAY STANDARD TIT-MEASURING FOR PEOPLE IN V. COMPLICATED SIZES WILL INCLUDE A TUB OF WATER.

[amianym]

Today in Fun Times with OpenDNS: BraStop and archive.org are blocked. Mind sticking this apparently-helpful sizing information somewhere I can access?

[momijizukamori]

I actually did, once upon a time, find one of those mythical bra fitters who actually know their shit. Unfortunately I discovered that even with a well-fitting bra, it makes my ribs hurt after a while. Thankfully the place has very comfy sports bras that actually support G-cups without costing a fortune, but sadly they have no US stores.

[silveradept]

...I have difficulty processing this because it makes no godsbefragged sense why someone hasn't figured out how to manufacture undergarments that are appropriately fitted for a reasonable cost, despite having had many decades of attempts at doing so.

Also, it makes even more sense now why some of my female-identified friends simply eschew a bra. They couldn't find anything resembling a fit even after trying.

Blargh.

[ilyena_sylph]

I am lucky enough that I can mostly get things that fit OTR.

I still hate the damned shopping, I don't like dealing with the salespeople, and the damned size variances between brands make me want to hurt things.

I am failing at cope and communicate atm, but this was an attempt to be sympathetic, am sorry if it failed or whacked at buttons.

[krait]

Definitely all my sympathy! Honestly, I think it'd be cheaper to just remove my boobs, and I'm a size that's halfway to 'affordable'. Bra shopping always brings to my mind the "Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Financial Inequity" from Discworld. D:

[mathsnerd]

Oh, don't get me started on bras. I'm not particularly endowed with boobage, but instead I get the fun and games of:

a) always being "between" cup sizes, thus forcing me to pick and choose a cup size based on which bra fits the closest to okay,

and b) never having the same bra size each time I go bra shopping and get measured.

Thanks to fibro and EDS, I'm getting close to considering a custom-fit corset to replace bras, as well. I need the support for my back and lower shoulder muscles.

[cleverthylacine]

Oh, separation.

I almost blew up at a friend who insisted that wires would lie flat between my breasts if my bra fit.

There is NO SPACE between my breasts. None. There is a crease in the centre of my chest where one ends and the other begins, but there ABSOLUTELY IS NOT the 1.5-3 cm space for two wires to lie flat next to each other. It is not, freaking, possible, ever.

[cleverthylacine]

While you still need to have the measurements, I have found the "know your breasts" bra finder at http://www.herroom.com to be very helpful, if you can get past the question about the "best fitting bra you already own" question without killing someone (it was hard for me too) because it brings up some issues that most bra fitters don't think about. (Sadly, the "professional" bra fitting I had at Macy's some years ago was horrifically bad.)

The issues I'm talking about involve breast shape, separation and your sternum and so on. I am very hard to fit because I've got boobs that touch each other and an omega/w shaped underbust line instead of two circles. Anyhow, I think that going through the questions about those things might help narrow down which of the bras that might fit you are more likely to fit than others. It's been very useful to know that no matter what certain people say, it's physically impossible for me to wear underwires and have them lie flat on my chest (you'd think I'd have realised that before, given that I'm generally good at spatial reasoning).

I think a lot of times it's really difficult to get measurements without another person helping, which of course requires you to be able to live with letting someone else hold the tape while you hold yourself up and sharing the information, and I think that's generally difficult for most people.