I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, the dreaded bra fitting. On the list of womanly things that must be done, the bra fitting ranks right up there with Pap smear and the mammogram.It’s always the same with these things. You know you should, but you’re always lookin for a good excuse not to. (I have the cats to de-worm and that old stump in the backyard really should be pulled up.)
In the case of the Pap and the mammogram, avoidance techniques only get you so far before guilt kicks in. (They say you should go once a year...) If you don’t act on this guilt, worry will sink her claws into you. (So-and-So’s cousin found a lump last month…) And if you fail to act on worry, you’ll be clobbered by terror. (Oh my God, what’s that? A lump? A tumour? Am I going to die?)
And, if you’re like me, you’ll hoof it down to your GP’s office and end up in one of those excruciating “through-the-stirrups” conversations. (So, Doctor, tell me, any new developments in the world of gynaecological instrumentation?)
With the bra fitting, the enemy isn’t disease or gynaecological instrumentation. It’s physics, but more on that in a minute.
When I first heard the infamous Oprah treatise that 85 percent of women are wearing the wrong bra size, I harrumphed and thought, yeah right, a tempest in a B-cup. I surveyed my own top drawer and decided, no, I’m not letting Oprah or anyone else browbeat me into new bra-buying behaviours.
So confident was I in the fit of my bras that one day I nipped into a bra shop to prove the point. And there I encountered my very first bra-tender. In case you’re not familiar with bra-tenders they are the big guns, the black belts, the crack commandos of bra fitting.
Their purpose is singular: to wean you off your old ill-fitting ways and get you into something that supports, lifts and pushes together. (The old Jane Russell project of lifting and separating is so last century). And once step foot on their turf, you can kiss your privacy bye bye; ditto any preconceived notions about the way you think your bra should fit.
“How’s that one feel?” one of them called out as I struggled in the changing room to get the first bra on. The curtain was then ripped opened and I was shunted to and fro, prodded and snapped until my bra-tender made her assessment. “You need a bigger cup. I’ll get one.” Yes, I thought, and fill it with bourbon while you’re at it.
As the fitting continued, I learned that I am one of Oprah’s infamous 85 percent, part of the great unsupported masses who have made the mistake of wearing a bra too big on the circumference and too small in the cup. And here is where the physics comes in. I can sum it up for you in one simple but devastating concept: gravity.
Gravity, my girlfriends, is not our friend. As that too-big bra band creeps upward on our backs, everything out front heads south. And it gets worse. If we do nothing to correct this gravity-fuelled southward journey, the journey could turn out to be one-way.
But there is good news too. According to my bra tender, gravity can be beaten if you keep the circumference snug and increase the cup size when necessary. So, I’m afraid that Oprah was right about this one. The choice is yours. And I know that mine doesn’t involve an early retirement in Florida.
