Bra Shopping

When it comes to women's bodies, in particular the breasts and butt, there's always some crisis that inherently keeps us from happiness: we're too large here, too squishy there, and somehow too small somewhere else.  Add to this the supposed "crisis" that 80% of women are wearing the wrong bra size {gasp!}, and an activity as basic as buying a new bra becomes a crash course in why feminism exists.

Once upon a time, I had a friend whose girlfriend had landed a job at one those Oprah-endorsed specialty bra shops.  He said to me something like, "You'd probably like this store.  Turns out most women are wearing the wrong bra size, and they help you find the right one."  Never one to hide my convictions, I remember launching directly into a rant about how the "wrong bra size" statistic is just another attempt at capitalizing on women's insecurities while turning the focus away from real women's issues such as poverty, abuse, pay inequities, etc.  I mean really!

Though I can't say I blamed my friend for assuming this was, in fact, a legitimate women's issue.  He wasn't exactly well-versed in feminist ideology, and from the outside, many of these specialty stores and brands model themselves to look like champions of women's advancement.  Indeed, to take the plunge into any department store undies section is to be inundated with co-opted feminist language: "Empower yourself with the new styles," "Comfort without sacrificing beauty," "Right on, Sister!", etc.  It's the garment equivalent of the old Virginia Slims ad, "You've come a long way, baby."

Yes, there's nothing quite like bra shopping to reaffirm your hatred for the the fashion industry.  Like big pharma, the people who decide what we put on our bodies are wizards at creating problems they subsequently manufacture products to fix, products that are neither easily replicated nor cheap.  They have underwear that encases your thighs and buttocks like sausages with tags that promise to "stop unsightly jiggling."  They have tanks that squeeze in your tummy while simultaneously pushing your boobies up towards your chin.  There's undies that pad your butt in the "right" area while squishing in the "extra" in another, then there's undies that don't hold much of anything at all but instead just help you floss your buttcrack.

A little further in, when you get to the actual bras, you have more choices to make: bras with wires, bras with molded cups, bras that won't show under t-shirts, bras with chutzpah, minimizer bras, maximizer bras, bras with weird little pockets of fluid in them, bras made of lace, bras that cover everything, bras that don't cover anything, strapless bras that glue themselves to your skin, bras that make your boobs look like torpedoes, bras with something called "nipple protection," the list goes on and on.  And all I wanted was a new bra.  Something comfortable that I can wear under anything.  That, and something with my two uncompromising rules for a new bra: nothing with hardware, and no chutzpah. 

All these options and barely anything fits my two little requirements.  See, I have an ideological problem with underwires.  It's not so much that they're uncomfortable, as apparently that's another one of the tell-tale signs that you're not wearing the right size (sure, let's blame the women for picking out the wrong size and not the company that uses child-labor to make a defective product).  It's not even so much that you can't put them in the dryer.  The problem I have with underwires is what they tell us about our breasts.  They're metal for crying out loud!  It's almost like they're saying, "Your boobies are so out of  control it takes hardware to hold them upright and keep them still."  Which is completely false, as I've had many bras that do their job without anything but stretchy fabric and a good design.  But they're not easy to find, as I'm a D cup.  You can usually find a nice, underwire-free style in the AA, the A, the B, sometimes even the C, but once you get to that D cup, BAM!  Your tig ol' bitties need some metal.

Then there's the chutzpah, by which I mean the padding that sits at the bottom of the cup.  Once my no-hardware rule has significantly narrowed down my options, the chutzpah seals my fate.  See, for some reason, the only way bra designers think you can go without hardware is by adding the under-padding.  It's like one replaces the other.  Sure, you can go without that uncomfortable metal, but you're gonna need that extra LIFT so we can all see your pretty, perky, lifted boobies.  Um, no.  My boobies don't need chutzpah, especially not with these D cups.  That shit's a health hazard... any extra and I'm liable to put someone's eye out.  There's nothing wrong with women wanting that extra lift, but when did chutzpah become the norm in bra design?

So went my shopping venture today: walking around the "intimates" section (I hate that word), squeezing the bottoms of each bra, feeling for hidden hardware or chutzpah, and not being surprised when it was present.  I did finally find what I wanted, but not without some digging.

When people characterize feminists as "bra burners," the only reason I scoff is because I know the origin of that stereotype and its negative connotations.  I don't take offense, however, to the notion that a feminist (or any woman) would want to burn a bra, hers or someone else's.  I want to burn half the bras on the store's racks, too... they're horrible reflections of women's self-hatred and are highly indicative of the way consumer culture breeds these issues.

The decision to go braless is a personal one, though not one I can comfortably make for my curvy self, nor can I bring myself to don a padded piece of hardware.  Underwire and padded bras are obviously preferences that are comfortable for many women, and my disdain does not lie in their decision to go that route.  I just can't get over the normalcy of those features, features that tell us there are things about our bodies that need to be "fixed," not for our personal comfort but for the way it looks to others.  And like so many "fixes," the problems are usually fabricated so a solution can be marketed.  Far from the feminist language they co-opt, women's undies comprise yet another industry that feeds off our constant need for improvement, not for personal comfort, but for that age-old impossible standard of beauty.