BRAS AND OTHER TIT-BITS.

The man in my life actually decided to have an argument with me today about the buying of bras.  As if he'd know anything.  I am now sixty-one, a baby boomer and one of the women who threw away their bras in the seventies.  I didn't do this to make a statement.  I did it because I couldn't find one that fitted or was comfortable.

A Camisole Bra

Sometime in the eighties I succumbed to what was called a cami-bra (camisole bra).  This was a delicious little lacy thing with no under-wiring and no hooks.  It could just be pulled on over the head.  You may have gathered that I am not overly well endowed.  But neither am I underlie endowed.  I have to say that at my age my breasts can stand up for themselves.  This is a wonderful gene I share with my mother.  She was a bigger woman all round than I and wore bras with under-wiring.  I realise that many women must wear these more uncomfortable bras to lift the mass of their breasts.  I'm fortunate in that I don't have to and it is women like me who are less catered for by the lingerie shops.

It seems that if you have 12B breasts your back is of an exact breadth so the hooks meet comfortably without you having to expel your lungs of all air.
For some reason I find that if the breasts fit in the cups, the girth of the bra doesn't accommodate my back and I am left fighting for air.

The pretty and supportive Under-wire bra.  A pity it's torture for some of us.

As a five year old when I accompanied my mother into the toilet in a department store I was fascinated when she would take down her panties and wee even though wearing another undergarment.  I strained my neck to see how she could do this.  She was wearing an item that was de-rigeur for women in those days: a girdle with suspenders attached for stockings.  This surrounded the hips but did not go beneath, however, at five, I couldn't quite get my head around it, literally, to see how it worked.

When I was at high school some clever person came up with pantihose.  I was addicted to the US magazine "Seventeen" and had anticipated this invention for six months before they arrived in Australia sometime in the mid-sixties.  Good-bye suspenders.  So long girdles.  Freedom, of sorts, had arrived.  If only bras had undergone such a revolution.

            From this                                                               To this

Cotton suspenders and stockings

My high school bra was of cotton.  I have the peculiar, it seems, problem of being wide set.  That is my breasts do not lie close together in the middle so a cleavage doesn't form.  Cotton bras were not designed for such a mutation but assumed all breasts were made the same.

The result of this was that my nipples and where they were meant to be to fill the bra did not coincide.  This meant puckering of the seam where the breasts did not fill them.  I also spent my day retrieving the straps from my arms and placing them on my shoulders.  This remains a problem today.  Four years ago, as I drive for a living, I decided to confront the buying of bras again.  There was just some jiggling as I drove and I thought I should support my girls so they wouldn't droop.

In spite of the advances in materials I find bras to still be a curse upon womankind.  I blame Madonna for a lot of this.  Just when some clever person had designed the cami-bra, along came Madonna, of the dubious morals, and had Jean Paul Gaultier design a costume for her.

Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier corset

A corset from the 1950's

The outfit was reminiscent of a full corset of the 1950's.  There was no stretch material in sight and plenty of seams and under-wire.  The cami-bra went the way of the dinosaurs and under-wiring came back with a vengeance.

Patti Page in the Fifties and the effect Gaultier's bra would have under a sweater.

Surprisingly some twenty years later, it persists as do lace and hooks.
A bra should be able to be worn under any clothing of any colour.  Now ideally, this just doesn't work but some of us try.  I buy flesh coloured, which goes under anything.  Black just doesn't go under white, nor does red, pink or purple.

My mother was an absolute stickler for bra straps not showing.  She had keepers in all her garments to stop the straps straying.

When celebrities make a fashion statement of showing their bra straps it doesn't bode well for good grooming.

Today I have seen women wearing dresses and tops with halters or cut away sleeves and their bra straps are on show as if trophies.  These also usually don't match the colour of the clothing they lie beneath   I find this an affront to my upbringing.  I may not have agreed with my mother's taste in clothes but you couldn't argue with her about grooming.  When she lived in a nursing home she wouldn't let her carers dress her in anything that didn't colour coordinate.  Now that's style!

But back to the beastly bra.  My man said: "What is wrong with you?  There are billions of women on the planet and you seem to be the only one who can't find a bra that fits in a shop."

I admit to being amazed that he thought he was an expert and decidedly argumentative to boot.  If you are a determined female who knows exactly what she wants, the range of bras to suit you in a shop is minimal.  I'm not the only one.  Breasts are like snowflakes.  There isn't, or aren't, in this case, two the same, on different women, that is.

A store can only keep a certain number of bras and if you are inclined to despise under-wiring, you are in the minority.  You will have to look in the Sports bra selection or the teen section.  The teen section, much like teen breasts, is small.  It also displays bras of ridiculous, lacy and mis-matching colours.

I finally went on-line and found something quite acceptable but still my man ranted.  "Surely you could have found it in a shop".  I told him I had tried and that I would be happy to show him the Bra section of any department store.  He declined.

I would like to say that I don't give him grief over what underdaks he chooses.  I simply wouldn't know what it is like to house a penis comfortably, or to the left or right.  One thing that can be said of the male appendage - there is usually (mutants not included) only one of them and it is placed smack in the centre.  If there were two and they varied from near to centre or further from centre, you can bet the buying of underpants would become a chore just as much as is the buying of bras.

The whale-boned corset.  What women did for beauty in 1899.

Yes, perhaps I am odd.  Perhaps years of going bra-less have spoiled me.  There have been much worse undergarments for women such as the whale-boned corset.  But women, themselves, are to blame.  What in heaven's name makes them willing to undergo torture in the undergarment department?  This wasn't a male directive but came from women themselves.  I don't think I am like most women because I won't suffer clothes that fight me.  We have enough to contend with in this world without being at war with our undies

The end.