Losing weight is such a positive thing. For women, fitting into a pair of jeans that happen to be a size smaller than you normally wear is right up there with finding out the guy you were completely mental over is way into you. Watching your body slim down is a plus, as is the fact that sex seems to get better with each fleeing pound, and picking out new clothes is such an esteem booster.
I don’t mind buying new pants; because Old Navy is the perfect destination for those of us in need of a reasonably priced transitional work wardrobe. Shirts are fun and adventurous to shop for, and the world of jackets seems to have opened up to me. My only bitch about shopping for new clothes lies in not what is visible, but what is invisible, or I should say, unmentionable.
Finding a perfect bra is like trying to climb Mt. Rainier in a wet suit. You may start out good and optimistic, but once you get into it, you realize you are way over your head, and any help you try to enlist is going to be expensive and embarrassing. The last time I tried to do quality bra hunting was my after baby excursion in early 2004. The fact is, once your tits go through lactation, they are never the same again. I gained an entire cup size, and not in the cool, glamorous, Hollywood way. After searching on my own, with no luck, I ended up exposing my less than fabulous chest to a small Asian woman in a Nordstrom dressing room. She measured me, and then talked me into buying very expensive bras that never quite fit that comfortably.
On the upside, I didn’t wear those pricy braziers long, because I lost enough weight to dig some oldies, but goodies out of the “prior to baby” clothing drawer. The three bras were still in fairly decent shape, but time seems to make one forget little quirks. The two white bras had a little squeak to them. Yes, that’s right, after wearing them for about an hour, if I shifted my body to either the left or right, they let out a muffled creak similar to wearing squeaky shoes. The black bra didn’t have the same oddly noisy foible, but it was beginning to show its wear. After spending an event committee meeting being a little too paranoid about my squeaky bra situation, I knew I had to bite the bullet and find a new method to keep the twins front and center.
On my first outing, I took Jeff and Rachael with me. This was really stupid. Jeff perched himself on the comfortable, padded bench in the Macy’s basement playing games on his cell phone, while Rachael followed me through aisles of bras. Like a tranny that just got his new tits, Rachael danced through the rows with excitement touching a variety of braziers. When she spotted a pinkish colored garment she would stop dead in her tracks and yell, “pinky Mommy, pinky, pinky.” It was too cute. She would survey the selection carefully picking out her favorites, then showing them to me with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, what my toddler failed to realize was that she picked the pretty, lacy, colorful bras, and those are only for little tittied girls. I am a DD, and they don’t give DD size bras descriptions like “fun” and “flirtatious,” which is okay by me, because when you have a pair of DDs, you don’t need to decorate them with foo foo and lace.
I probably tried on 20 bras before throwing in the towel. I went home that night and began to try and gauge exactly how much mileage I could get out of my squeaky whites and my ratty black. I also wondered how much recovery time I would need if I just had the breast lift surgery, but decided that was not an option at this point in my life, because I have a big trip coming up in December. Plus, if I ended up getting the tits lifted now, and decided to have another kid, then lactation will destroy at least $5,000 worth of work, and my husband would consider it too wasteful to pay for a second breast lift.
The next day, I went out alone, returning to the mall for one last try. I found myself in the basement of JC Penney surveying the selection, which leads me to another question, ‘why the hell are the bras and panties always relegated to the basement!?!’ Is our society still that fucking Puritanical? I struck gold on my shopping trip, because out of the five bras that I brought back to the dressing room, the first one I tried on fit comfortably and made my boobs look good. They were also on sale and there was an offer for a buy three, get one free!
I’m set for now, thankfully, but I still hate shopping for bras. I can only hope that as I continue to drop weight it will not be necessary for me to go through this bra shopping experience again until I reach my goal. Then I will suck it up, head to the mall, and avoid the pretty bras once again. Just for amusement, I will take Rachael, because watching someone so young get that excited about bras is humorous, yet slightly disturbing.
1 comment:
I'd like my titsling collection to have a little more character to it, but like you, the size of my chest forces me to purchase the most plain, banal bras available. Comfortable, yes, but sexy? No. I'd like some underwear that I want to *show* off before *taking* it off, but the only place that seems to cater to my desires is Fredericks of Hollywood- their full-figured line looks nice- but I'm hesitant to order bras from a catalog. I'd much prefer to try them on first. Unfortunately, the closest Frederick's store is in Sea-Tac, and they don't even carry everything in the catalog. Boooo.
As for Victoria's Secret...those things they sell are USELESS. They're good ONLY for viewing pleasure. And I don't have the cash to spend on something like that- my underwear needs to pull double duty, serving as useful AND attractive. A tall order, I know.
I've found that Mervyn's usually has a decent stock of interesting-looking but still functional bras, though. Last time I was there they had these swanky little electric-blue and leopard print deals. They generally don't have a very long life, but they do the trick for as long as you can manage to keep them around.
So yes. I feel your pain. In a somewhat literal sense.
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