Breasts, body angst, bras...and peace » All bra adventures

Breasts, body angst, bras...and peace

Today I'm wearing the Panache Tango Ii Balconette (3251) and it fits, for real! No gapping at all! I was starting to expect gapping from unlined/unpadded bras but I was really just buying them too big.

I got to thinking today about the body image journey I've been on, and the bra "adventures" I've had on that journey. I suffered from an eating disorder that deteriorated into full-blown anorexia, putting me in the hospital for four months in my mid-30s. Post-discharge, I actually got much worse before I slowly began to turn it around. I'm now at the high end of "normal" BMI, and have gained almost 70 lbs from my lowest weight. Naturally that means my breasts have gotten larger.

I spent much of the time I was ill (the better part of 18 years) trying to erase my breasts, pretend they didn't exist, flatten them. I wore business suits every day with camisoles with shelf-bras built in, trying to appear as flat-chested as possible. That was my GOAL. Flat. I hated my breasts, hated them! And I wanted them to go away.

Partway through my recovery, when I was eating and therefore thinking a bit more clearly, I decided to get some grown-up bras. Since I was a professional lady and therefore had money to spend, I went to Dillard's and browsed through their Wacoal selection. I grew more and more agitated as I knew nothing would fit my "freakish" body. I really had no idea what size I was but every bra I hauled into that changing room looked absolutely ridiculous, and I ended up curled up in a ball sobbing on the floor.

I pulled myself together, got dressed and came out of the changing room. There was a sweet Thai lady working in the bra section, and she saw my face and came over and asked me what I was looking for. "A bra," I told her. "But my body is too freakish to wear one." She gave me one of the warmest smiles I'd ever seen and told me she would help me. Inside I cringed. I gave her my criteria for a bra: full coverage, no padding, no pushup, preferably minimizing. (No wonder I couldn't find anything.) She took me to a section of Wacoal bras designed for smaller women and pulled down a 32A.

"This for LIFT," she said. I noticed the bra had removable pads and remarked that I supposed I could take the pads out. "No, no, LIFT! Lift GOOD!" she said. Inside I rolled my eyes but I took it into the changing room.

Ho-ly-cow. When I put on that bra, and put my t-shirt on over it...I saw myself. Not the smeary blob of a non-person-mere-thing that I always saw in the mirror. I was...a woman. I had breasts. And they were, dare I say, attractive.

I walked out of the changing room and my little Thai lady friend was grinning when she saw my smile. "See? Lift GOOD!" I agreed, lift is indeed good. And I bought four of those bras.

I got the biggest kick out of those bras because I really had not seen myself with "breasts" in a long, long time. I stared at them. I giggled. I joked with my husband that my breasts arrived in a room five minutes before I did. The padding was such that I could run into a wall and not get hurt. Sure, the cups dented, but by gosh, I looked like I had breasts and I actually liked it!

I like to think that those little bras (which, of course, were not actually the right size) helped me along with my recovery.

As years passed and I actually did recover, I found myself smashing my breasts into compression sports bras, again trying to pretend they didn't exist. I had trouble dealing with my changing body, and especially my changing bustline. Those little bras were never going to "cut it" again (and in fact, I just gave them away yesterday). And so, I went out into the world of minimizing bras.

Problem was, what I thought was my size (34B) isn't made in regular minimizers. So I hopped into a 36C. I won't mention the bras I was wearing but they did not minimize, they did not lift, they...basically sort of covered my breasts. And that was what I settled for, because I didn't know any better, and because I was still of the mindset that my breasts needed to be minimized. Marginalized.

Then I found /r/abrathatfits/ and things changed for the better. I found out I'm a 30 band. I'm still sort of figuring out my cup size...it seems to be more of an E/F than the FF/G I initially thought. The first time I tried on a bra close to my actual size...it was like I stepped through a door that had been closed to me all these years of my life (42 of them, to be exact). I'm not going to say I heard a choir of angels, but I was struck by the realization that I AM A WOMAN! And that's GOOD.

So it's been, what, a week and a half or so of wearing a bra that fits. I find that I stand straighter. I hold my head up. I'm not slouching trying to hide my breasts. 30E/F isn't huge, it isn't small, it's just ME, for now, and this ME deserves to wear a bra that fits and face the world smiling.

And my bras are pretty. And you know...not a one is "nude" colored like those four Wacoal bras.

I'm a woman. And it's good.

Filed under Boob and body issues

Shared on Aug 29, 2013 Flag this