For Me and My Girls

I don't know about you, but I HATE bra shopping!

In the first place, you walk into the store and are met with a dizzying choice of brassieres. Every color from nude, black, or white to hot pink, teal, or zebra-striped. Minimizer, push-up, demi-cup, full-cup, convertible, underwire, no-wire, padded, soft-cup, plunge, T-back, sports bras, front closure, back closure . . .

If you are fortunate enough to find a style that looks like something you might want and in the color you want, then good luck finding your size among the rows and rows of undergarments with puzzling sizes like 28AA or 48DDDD (but with surprisingly few sizes in-between). And even if you've been to Victoria's Secret to be properly fitted, and have been buying the same size for years, and you know exactly what your size should be, and you actually find your size in the store, you still have to try them on because they never fit the same. You can't just pull one off the rack and buy it.

Trying them on is delightful too. In a nicer store (which I would recommend) the dressing room is usually near the lingerie section; in a store like, say. . . Walmart (which I would definitely not recommend for a purchase like this), you might have to hike for a while with your basket full of goodies before you find the dressing room. Once you are an old lady like me this isn't nearly as embarrassing as it was when you were eighteen, but still . . .

You go into the dressing room with half a dozen of the silly things—if you're lucky enough to find that many in "your size"—in the hopes of discovering at least one that you'd like to take home. Of course none of them is just right on the first trip to the dressing room. If the band fits, the cup is too big or vice-versa.  Or the cup mostly fits, except for this excess loose bit of fabric right at the bust point so it wrinkles and shows under your clothes. (Does anyone really have breasts shaped like that? Or . . . ouch! . . . is it just that mine are so old and have nursed so many babies that only mine are not shaped like that?) Or the cup is smooth but the upper edge cuts into you, making you look like you now have four breasts, but the next cup-size up (in the same style) is way too big. Or the cup is so nicely molded that even with my forty-something-year-old bosom the bra will hold its own shape; it will keep that shape no matter how or where you move, whether you're standing or lying down, whether it's hanging in your closet or on your body.  No thanks.

After trying on that first cart full of brassieres, you have to get dressed again, take a deep breath and start the search all over. Sheesh! Three times this morning I almost put my coat back on and forgot my shirt! That's how frazzled this makes me. And I still left the store empty-handed.

And on top of all that frustration, I have to say that there is no use in trying to look good when you leave on a bra-shopping trip because after you've pulled your shirt off and put it back on five times, there is no hope of having nice-looking hair. No, not even with a button-down shirt. No. hope!

But bra shopping is one of those necessary evils in life. I know what you are thinking, and my answer to you is, "No, I can not just go bra-less." After all, difficult though it may be, I want to give my girls all the support they need.