Real and spectacular

Breasts. That’s all I need to write to get your attention. Everyone on earth has them (Some even have three nipples), but their omnipresence has not diminished the obsession. A multi-million dollar industry has been built on the desire to make them bigger.

Transvestites take birth control pills in the hope that hormones will enlarge their mammaries. Starlets have attained fame disproportionate to their talent by displaying their boobies.

There is an entire branch of magazine publishing devoted to the worship of breasts. If for any reason you are dissatisfied with the volume and density of your chest area, you can go for plastic enhancements.

It’s when you happen to like the breasts you were born with that the problem begins. What if, like the classic Seinfeld episode, yours are real and spectacular? For committing the crime of contentment (which is inimical to the market which promotes dissatisfaction in order to sell you stuff), you are punished.

I’m talking about brassieres and the lack of options for local consumers. Granted, the presence of foreign stores and brands such as Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and La Senza has eased our pain somewhat, but this is not nearly enough. Half the world needs bras, the demand is huge, so manufacturers should fill the shops with brassieres of every circumference and cup size (two entirely different measurements), material, style, engineering, and design. Sadly, this is not the case.

Women know that when they find a bra that fits perfectly, in a style that they like, they have to buy three or four of them at once.

Otherwise those bras will vanish from the face of the earth. When you return to the shop, the salesperson will tell you that the style you want is out of stock or has been discontinued. Then she will offer you a new style that’s supposed to be just like the one you want.

Inevitably this new bra is so heavily padded, there is no space left for the actual boob. When you point this out, she offers you the same bra in the next size, which leads to an entirely different problem.

Why is it that you can walk into a computer shop and find three dozen types of laptop cases, but when you go to a ladies’ underwear store you’d be lucky to find one bra you like? Obviously it’s because laptops follow a standard of measurement, but women’s breasts are unique.

A brilliant writer, male, once said of the movie censors’ rule against “double breast exposure:” “In my limited experience if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them both.” Actually, no. There are very slight, barely noticeable variations — and that’s on the same woman! Take these size differentials and multiply them by, oh, three billion, and you see what brassiere makers have to contend with. Standardized measurements simply cannot accommodate all the variations.

So we suffer.

Before we continue, there’s an issue we need to get out of the way. In the 1960s, proponents of Women’s Liberation burned their bras to protest against male domination and the repression of women.

Brassieres were the symbol of confinement, oppression, and conformity.

Why, then, are women still wearing bras?

Simple answer: Gravity rules. It’s an aesthetic issue. If you don’t wear a bra, you hasten the sagging of your breasts. It’s also a practical issue: you cannot find clothes that will fit you if your boobs are hanging around your knees.

What about the rights that previous generations of women courageously fought for? Our wearing of bras does not belittle their struggle.

Hello, we won. We have most of the liberties they fought for, not just symbolically but actually (though feminists will take issue with this statement). If called upon to take to the streets in defense of women’s rights, the bra will still be a potent symbol. We can take all the bras we’ve bought over the years and use them as slingshots.

Assuming the elastic still works. As my editor pointed out, the bra is always a burning issue.

To begin my epic research, I asked friends to vent their issues concerning bras. I was stunned at the rage and despair I had unwittingly unleashed. It turns out that if you want to know what ticks women off, ask them about bras.

Anna says, “Fit is a nightmare! First you have to figure out the size and right style of a bra. Then lacking standardization, you have to try everything on — which is kind of gross if you ask me. That is, if I can find my size at all, which has always been a struggle for large-breasted women in Asia. So I’m stuck between the slim selection available here, or buying over the Internet. For the latter you have to stick to previously tested brands obviously, but even they like to futz with their fit and sizes so it’s a giant crap shoot. This is currently my problem, so you have triggered a rage response.

“And don’t get me started on other women wearing crappy bras. My mother is a prime example. I keep telling her she’s wearing the wrong size — they’re much too big — but she complains that they hurt if she buys them smaller. I tell her they hurt because they may be the right size but the wrong fit, and she doesn’t believe me. So she looks like a sack of potatoes.

“We need to teach bra sizing in school because I only got my bra size right sometime in the ’90s. Apparently in the States, they’re really screwing with people’s heads now because the cup sizes go into G and H, even higher. The way size 6 is now size 2 in dresses, they’re trying to fake self-esteem with giant cup sizes.”

By my observation, at least half the women in Metro Manila are wearing the wrong cup size. Most of them are too small — you can tell by the stripe effect on the sides and back of their outer garments.

“I have to confess that I only recently found a bra that fits me perfectly,” Maria says. “It’s shocking because I’m 37 years old. All this time my bras were either too tight or too loose, or the cup didn’t fit right. I’ve tried local brands, and sad to say, a lot of them get that “bacon” effect after a few washings. I’ve had strapless bras that kept falling down or left painful welts on my skin as if I’d been tortured.

“I’ve seen a couple of American and British makeover shows, and they always emphasize that your bra should fit right. Apparently a good salesperson should help you with that. Where are they? I’ve been fitting bras for years and I have yet to meet one who knows what she’s talking about. I discovered my favorite bra by accident and to save myself the trouble I just buy all my 34 B’s from the same store.”

Serena complains that “bras are good only for three months. After that the straps need to be adjusted because they keep falling down your shoulders. The garters or stretchable mesh they use have a brief stretch tenacity.

“I prefer the soft, cottony and lacy cups on wired bras, but now all the brands are selling silicone cups that add more bulk to your breasts.” Proper sizing is the main issue. “When you want cup C of your own size, they give you cup B of the larger size and claim that it’s the same. No, it isn’t.”

Incidentally, the cup size problem is not the same as a weight problem. There are ignorant people who assume that all these bra-related issues would disappear if women grew thinner. They have circumference — the reading of the tape measure around the chest — confused with cup size—the volume of each boob. If a woman loses weight her girth decreases so she could go from, say, 40 to 36, but her cup size will remain unchanged or drop very slightly.

Months ago, Venus ordered some $50 DD-cup bras on the Internet — six-way underwired undergarments that guarantee your breasts will stay put in an intensity 10 earthquake. Apparently there is no one standard for cup measurements, because when her orders arrived they looked like giant padded crash helmets.

“Well-endowed women have to content themselves with boring, dowdy styles. Beige is not a color! “You’d think bra designers would have the sense to go, ‘Hey, it’s big-breasted women who really need bras, so let’s give them nice choices for strapless, balcony, low-back, underwired and sports bras.’ No. They think, ‘these big-breasted women should be happy with plain bras that make them look like their grandmothers.’ It’s plain stupid.”

Burning issue? It’s a conflagration. Women are unhappy with the bra situation. Something has to change.

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