Impractical female clothing.

[baratron]

Today I was feeling very anxious and only managed to get out of bed at 3.30 pm. I was all foggy in the head and put on the bra I was wearing yesterday, totally forgetting that when I'm premenstrual, my breasts grow a cup size. As a result, by the time I was halfway to college and had been in the bra for 40 minutes or so, my left bosom was being squashed so thoroughly that it hurt like hell. (My criteria for pain is based on my gall bladder - the kind of pain the bra was causing was equivalent to the minor gall bladder rumbles that make me need to take Buscopan and/or paracetamol.) Not horrendous, but enough that I was considering painkillers - which for pain caused by a bra is ridiculous! So I tried to think carefully about what to do.

Going bra-less isn't an option. Unless I take special precautions with vests etc, my breasts are large enough that without a bra, complete strangers can see everything. I don't generally like for strangers to be able to make out the entire shape of my boobs, nipples and all. Continuing to wear that bra wasn't an option - it hurt too much. Undoing it wouldn't help because it was the cup size that was the problem, not the circumference. Going home to fetch my larger cup size bra wasn't an option, because it would take me at least half an hour for the round trip and I only just had enough time to get to college. So I decided to get off the train at Wimbledon and buy a bigger bra. There's a Marks & Spencer's next to the station, and I was hoping it was a proper M&S and not just a Simply Foods.

I was wrong. It was a Simply Foods. So I went round Centre Court (the indoor shopping centre) and the first place I could find that sold bras was an Ann Summers/Knickerbox combination store. Now, for those who don't know, Ann Summers is a particularly tacky British chain "sex" store that specialises in overpriced vibrators and tacky underwear that is hand-wash only and falls apart if you try to wear it for anything other than sex. In case you are particularly unobservant, I am the kind of geek girl who doesn't shave her body hair and wears plain black, sensible, supportive undergarments that do the job of holding up her bosom by clever engineering. I am not the kind of girl who wears frilly leopard skin bras with black lace, let alone pink leopard skin bras with red lace (ewww!).

Anyway. I went through the sale garments and bought the only 38E bra in the store. It was £12, down from £25, which is a joke. My Marks & Spencer's bras only cost £16 normally, and from an engineering point of view, are vastly superior. This stupid bra relies only on ouchy underwires to do the job - the straps are so thin as to be useless, the cups are so poorly shaped as to provide no support at all, and the back clip is just there to make the thing easier to put on rather than provide structural integrity. Also, it is made of insanely cheap artificial fibres (sweaty) rather than decent cotton (comfortable against sensitive skin). As already mentioned, it is hand wash only, which is a ridiculous for UNDERWEAR. I mean, I wear a bra every day unless I happen not to leave the house all day. Hand washing the things would take an hour or more out of each week, unless you are rich enough to own eight bras and do it once a month instead. (And I expect it would then take four hours). And hand washing something that is made of polyester and polyurethane is hilarious. We're not talking delicate, expensive fibres like satin or silk here, but cheap polymers.

Also, how do people wear underwired bras? Whenever I wear one, even a properly-fitted one rather than an underwired bra I grabbed because it was the only bra in my size, the wires dig into me whenever I stretch upwards, twist, or bend down to get an item. Having that happen 10 times in an evening was bad enough. Having it happen many times a day would drive me insane. I love that Marks & Spencer sell non-wired bras even in the largest sizes.

I hope I am not inundated with weird spam and comments as a result of this post. Oh well. I can always repost them for us all to laugh at.

Comments

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I must be imagining it, but I seem to notice many of the female geeks are quite keen on admiring other women's breasts from afar/closeup too ;).

I'm lacking somewhat in the busom department due to being male, but as far as I can see finding the right bra is a fairly personal thing. It's like skincare : whilst there are basic rules that can be followed, the fine tuning is specific to each person.

The analogy with junk food is a good one : not everyone wants the sensible option, they're not prepared to pay the price or they've never been given anything that isn't junk and so accept what they see as the status quo.

It's clearly not economic to run a mainstream bra customisation service, otherwise people would be doing it already.

I did idly wonder if you could have a 'lego' type approach to bras where they're slotted together, but looking at larger sizes the engineering seems fairly formidable. It'd be tricky to just slot bits together without losing structural integrity.

[(Anonymous)]

I've actually gotten enough flab in the chest to qualify as having 'man-boobies'... and I've thought about the construction of a training bra that would fit me. It's given me some appreciation of the engineering involved.

I think 90% of the hard stuff would be getting to the point of printing out a pattern on a printer. Actual construction costs the manufactures a tiny fraction of what they charge the consumer. It's mostly post-manufacturing costs, distributing ad advertising it, that pushes the cost up. A homebrew version could spend a bit more on the construction phase if it didn't have to worry about branding and shelving the stuff.

As for what's economic... if you went by what's available, you wouldn't think it's economic to have air to breathe or water to drink, given what the market is telling us. There's a lot of untapped potential once the financial giants have fallen.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

I think part of the issue for any bra customizing business is that an awful lot of women are not aware that bras CAN be comfortable, so it wouldn't occur to them to pay customized prices for something that they assume will do the same job as the 10ukp thing they got on sale.

Plus, if you're used to buying (relatively) cheap piece of crap bras and replacing them every 6 months when they fall apart, you probably have a lot of sticker shock looking at even a well-constructed mass-market bra, even though THAT bra, cared for appropriately, will probably happily last you years.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

an awful lot of women are not aware that bras CAN be comfortable

Yeah. This is one of the main points I was trying to make.

A lot of clothing for women simply isn't comfortable or practical. Men's clothes differ little from one season to another, although I do wish the ridiculous trend of trousers worn beneath the bottom would go away. In general, it's pretty much the same - trousers, t-shirts, shirts, ties and jackets don't change shape too much, because men don't change shape much. However, women's clothing varies tremendously in shape from one season to the next depending on what is currently fashionable. It typically lacks pockets, expecting all women to make themselves mugging candidates by carrying their valuables in a handbag instead of very close to their person. And it can be virtually impossible to get trousers that are big enough to get your bottom into for several whole months at a time, even if you frequent traditional, non-fashionable shops like M&S and John Lewis's. When a style that actually suits me comes into fashion, and provided it's not made of scritchy fabric, I'll bulk-buy multiple copies of the same garment in different colours.

I actually do most of my shopping for clothing in North America. I'd like to buy entirely Fairtrade, ethically manufactured garments. But many of the Fairtrade retailers stop at a size 14 or 16. At least in the US and Canada, there's some belief that women come in different shapes and sizes, meaning that clothing for larger, pear-shaped women exists. While it might not be fairly traded, it may well be ethically manufactured if you shop carefully.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'd like to buy entirely Fairtrade, ethically manufactured garments. But many of the Fairtrade retailers stop at a size 14 or 16.

Yes, I have that problem, too. M&S seem to be starting to address it, though - I've just bought two Fairtrade cotton T-shirts from their website in a size 20, for keep fit.

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

I think it's a wider problem than just bras. People in general are not prepared to pay more for garments that will last them years.

I suspect there's also a difference between comfortable enough and properly fitted for most clothes. It's usually fairly obvious with experience to work out that something is actively uncomfortable. Finding the difference between something that is comfortable enough but annoying over time and something that is genuinely fitted is perhaps a different matter.