Hey! I found out what bra size I am.
If my mother is reading this, she is saying to herself "I'm not sure about this blogging thing. First all the talk about porn, now she's giving away her measurements." My father-in-law in Scotland is shaking his head sadly. The guy surfing in the Podlesie district of Katowice for things "very nudle" is chuckling and rubbing his hands together.
My sisters won't blink and they won't chuckle; they understand. They'll nod and think about the last time they spent three hours trying on bras while their daughters ran amok.
I thought I was a 36B, and I have thought that for years.
In case you don't know, bra sizes are combinations of chest size shown as numbers (for example, in the United States these are 32, 34, 36, etc.) and cup sizes (letters like AA, A, B, C, etc.) If you wear the wrong number size, the band will be too tight and cut off the circulation to the upper part of your body causing you to lose your train of thought in the middle of a client presentation and fall down; or the band will be too loose and suddenly your bra is a necklace. If your cup size is too small your breasts tend to bulge out on the sides, causing armpit boobs, or over the tops of the cups, giving you four breasts instead of two. Cups that are too big either make you look strangely bulbous, or puckered and wrinkled so your breastly profile is not smooth, lifted and separated. Horrific.
Bra shopping has always been weird for me. Every three years I sort of slink into the Intimate Apparel department, pretending I'm not really bra shopping, and after lurking for a while I grab some black and beige bras and rush off to the fitting room. Over time I get progressively more daring, maybe even throwing in a blue bra, but never red. Trying on my choices, I discover that not one of the bras I have pulled off the racks fits. So I venture out and grab thirty or so more, in various sizes. Pretty soon my fitting room is a roiling, seething mass of straps and cups and lace and I can't find anything and at last I emerge, sweaty and defeated with one black or beige bra that will soon have puckered cups. Then I go home and take a nap.
In spite of my ambivalence about bra shopping, the bra has always been interesting to me. Perhaps it's because I was flat chested for so long and didn't wear a bra until I was thirteen, and then it was a hand-me-down from my sister. I did a presentation on the form and history of the bra in one of my graduate school classes and remember talking about the invention of Lycra and women tossing their bras away in the late sixties and seventies, and the Wonderbra. My classmates and professor loved it. Then when I got married my dressmaker (whom I suspect is a witch) said to me, "I bet you've always thought you were flat chested, but actually you just have a big rib cage." Then she instructed me to go to Victoria's Secret and buy some "chicken boobs," or breast-shaped squishy silicone things that she wedged under my breasts in the corset that she sewed and yanked and adjusted until my dress looked like it was on someone else's body, someone with an actual waist and actual breasts. Yes, definitely a witch. Recently, reading Bitch Ph.D., I came across a blog called Bra-making with Bra-makers which I think is a pretty cool spin on the whole expert blog thing.
So it's been three years since I went bra shopping and yesterday Iona and I walked into the enormous SEA OF FOUNDATIONS at Nordstrom and I began to rock and moan. Or I would have if I didn't have to put on a brave face for Iona. There were bras in every imaginable color and pattern and brand, all to accomplish something different like push you up, smash you down, disappear, show under your clothes, seduce your date, husband and/or girlfriend and there were a million colors and patterns, including Iona's favorite, "cheetah," and there were turquoise blue with hot pink trim and lime green with brown, along with various skin tones, flower patterns, lace and no lace and then you had full cup, demi-cup, underwire and not underwire under the brand names Betsey Johnson, Calvin Klein, Elle Macpherson, Cosa Bella and huit. There's something called iBra from Wacoal which looks like it's made out of neoprene and claims to be the most comfortable bra ever, with "No stitches, no seams, no tags."
The room was spinning and I was clutching a La Perla rack for support when Dushaun, Assistant Manager and Certified Bra Fitter, showed up and asked if I needed help.
"I'm a 36B," I muttered.
Her tone was crisp. "No you're not. You're a 34. Let's get you into a fitting room."
Dushaun taught me that bras should not be instruments of torture. "I want to see every one of these on the loosest hook," she told me sternly, handing me eight new styles. She stayed in the room while I changed, and after a while I stopped cowering and felt almost casual when I took off the On Gossamer creation and put on the Natori. She adjusted my straps. She shook her head and said, "No, I don't like that on you," or "That's cute." Under Dushaun's tutelage I realized that sometimes less padding is more. I conquered my fear of convertible bras. I determined, definitively, that I will never buy another strapless bra.
Three hours later Dushaun looked at me and said gently, "I think you've tried on everything in black that we have. Do you think you might be ready to ring up now?" During the three hours Iona had escaped several times, eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, stolen peppermints and Kleenex from the huge, totally cool prosthesis fitting room next door (three cheers for Nordstrom), laid down on the bench and sucked her thumb, peed in the men's room (the women's was closed for cleaning) and colored a picture of two bears.
I walked out of Nordstrom with eight black bras. Thanks, Dushaun. See you in three years.
