Impractical female clothing.
Oct. 15th, 2008 03:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronToday 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-15 10:23 pm (UTC)I had no choice but to go into the Knickerbox - there wasn't anywhere else immediately obvious to buy a bra from. (I know my way round Wimbledon but only to find the bus stops - wouldn't ever choose to shop there because it has a lousy selection of shops.) I went in knowing that whatever I got from there would be crap. However, I was shocked by how crap it was.
Put it this way. If you go into McDonalds, and pay £2.50 for a burger, fries and Coke, you know it's going to be crap. If you were to go into McDonalds and they tried to charge you £15 for the same meal, you'd feel rightly pissed off. If the shitty bra was £10 normally and £3 in the sale, I'd have felt that I got what I paid for. But at £25 normally and £12 in the sale, I feel offended.
A bra can be "pretty" (a colour other than black, perhaps with a pattern, perhaps with the lace that my skin regards as itchy and uncomfortable but other people like), yet still well-enough made to do the job for which it is intended, i.e. support breasts. The bras in Knickerbox were not even pretty - many of them were in completely bizarre colours that I couldn't imagine any conventional (i.e. non-geek) trendy (fashion-following) heterosexual girl or boy finding attractive. And then on top of that, the combination of poor manufacture and extremely high price was insulting.
I think also that you misplace my offense. I'm not offended for myself. I was in a hurry, it was an emergency bra, it lasted the length of my lecture. I would throw it away but that's too wasteful, so if I have spoons I'll rinse it through and give it to a charity shop. Whatever. The people I feel offended for are Knickerbox's standard clientele - the girls who shop there because they simply don't know better. They haven't been well enough educated in textiles to know that those fabrics are dirt cheap, make you sweat horribly and can cause skin rashes; and they haven't been well enough educated in physics to know that those bras will only "hold up" breasts that can already hold themselves up. They're so used to itchy, uncomfortable, impractical, unwearable female clothing that it hasn't occurred to them that it's possible to have comfortable clothing. They may be so keen on brand names that they overlook decent, well-made garments. I feel sorry for them, and insulted that they have to put up with such tat.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 10:19 am (UTC)Surely, however, awful though shoddy clothing is, it's merely a function of the market. Most people know that M&S provide decent underwear, although I can imagine younger people might think it has a bit of a fuddy duddy image..?
It's sad that many women wear crap bras, but there's enough adverts and information to point them to the better suppliers (although, yes, even M&S and Bravissimo get it wrong at times). Surely, over time, most people realise that some shops are better than others and that this applies to all clothes and footwear..
I think if I Ruled The World, I'd have a top ten list of 'things you have to work out for yourself' (with help from other people). 'Which bra fits' would be in the list for women, as would 'Which products should I use to shave?' (for everyone).