Today I subjected myself to the awful ordeal known as bra shopping because my eight year old bras (old enough to be halfway through grade school) have all decided to give up their tenuous hold on my torso.
After so many brave years of service, I wish them well.
Last time I went bra shopping I went to Nordstrom, but Nordstrom no longer exists in Canada, joining its fallen brethren, Sears, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond in the venture capital graveyard. Eight years ago, at Nordstrom, a Russian lady with a severe blonde updo told me I have European breasts, whatever that meant, and I wore the three bras she sold to me for the better part of a decade, apart from an emergency sports bra purchase last year when I found myself in the resort town of Banff sans underwear. (That bra doesn’t earn the “sports” designation unless that sport is chess, but that’s a story for another time.)
So I did what any person with tits does, and turned to reddit to recommend a bra shop for me. The closest one was a few suburbs away, but it had good recommendations. And it’s next door to a good coffee shop! But when I turned up there it was so hot I didn’t want coffee and also it became clear this is not the kind of bra shop where you grab some bras and try them on until one turns out ok. By ok I mean it doesn’t make you feel like you’ve got three tits like that woman in Total Recall. No this is the kind of bra shop where they measure you and bring you the bras that they think will fit, in a vaguely patronizing and horrifying manner. Also you just stand there in your underwear for what feels like seven hours while people just wander past.
Luckily I have kids so I have no dignity left whatsoever.
The nice lady working there showed me to a fitting room and gave me a skeptical once-over.
“What size bra are you wearing now?” She asked. I feel like it’s important to note that she was wearing a cowboy hat the entire time this fitting occurred, because reasons, which I won’t go into on account of how you can probably dox me just from knowing I’m in Canada so I shouldn’t get more regionally specific. Though the cowboy hat may give it away.
I told her, and I immediately knew I was wrong about my bra size, because the first rule of shopping for bras is that you are wrong about your bra size.
“I don’t think so,” she said, kindly, and proceeded to bring me a bra with an F cup. I’ve been wearing a D cup for lo these eight years. No, apparently I’ve jumped right over E and straight into F. Also the Russian lady at Nordstrom had me in the wrong size band, and also whatever else European breasts means it also apparently signifies that I have a very odd shape because only two bras at this entire bra shop fit me. One of them was $225 and also lacy and scarlet. It did fit really well, but I politely demurred on it, as what I really wanted was not lacy and scarlet. I wanted a beige bra! Good old beige! I am not living a scarlet lace bra life! I am living a beige bra built by engineers with enough structural integrity to hold a cliff face together life.
The lady in the cowboy hat was quite sympathic. “You must have had so much trouble buying bras,” she said. “It’s not your fault! The bra industry is just like that for some people.”
I felt like I was in church and the priest just told me I was a fallen sinner but Jesus loves me anyway.
Alas, even though the lady in the cowboy hat was very nice, they didn’t have a single beige bra in my F cup size so they ordered one in for me. It will come next week. And then I got home and nearly cried because??? Why can’t I just buy a bra??? At a shop that sells bras???? At a SHOP THAT SELLS BRAS.
That’s when I realised I hadn’t eaten lunch which is probably why I was crying over beige bras so I as I write this I’ve eaten a whole bag of white cheddar flavoured popcorners.
The moral of this story is to not have breasts. The end.
