Don't fear the bra size, fear bad bras!

Source: St.迷你倉沙田 Louis Post-DispatchJuly 26--Porn stars haven't done the bra-wearing public any favors.Let's be honest, if you know someone who hasn't equated large breasts with something unseemly, you probably don't have many friends."The letters we use to measure bras are so loaded with social stuff," said Melissa Eagan of Uplift, a St. Louis pop-up bra boutique. "People think DD (cup-size) means porn star boobs, and it doesn't help that celebrities are bragging about having surgery to increase their size to whatever cup."Eagan says the stigma makes women timid about upping their bra size, when it should be a no-brainer. A bra is for support. It won't support well if it doesn't fit well.How can you tell? A good rule of thumb if you are wearing a typical bra with two individual cups is that you should be able to press the center part between your breasts and feel that it's flat against your chest. As Catherine Burns of Ann's Bra Shop in Chesterfield would say, if you press and there's a mini trampoline there, you're wearing the wrong bra."They think, oh no, I can't be a C-cup or I can't be a GG. They say, 'I didn't even know that size exisited,'?" Eagan recounted.Though she's a bra expert today, Eagan was clueless too before she started her pop-up boutique business hosting bra parties.By day, Eagan works in an IT department for a global communications company. She says that she's not a fashionista, so she was fine buying everything at Target."If Target didn't carry it, I didn't know where to get it," Eagan said. Consequently, she decided that she wore a size 32B bra, "now I have no idea why." The bras never fit well, but she didn't know any better. She admits that she too might have thought a larger cup size would be a reflection on her character."It's crazy because your bra size is your bra size. Wearing the right size doesn't change anything except it looks better," Eagan said.She did some research and shopped around and discovered that she was actually a size 32F, which is a size Target doesn't carry. Five cup sizes is roughly 5 inches in depth. She acknowledges that this is not uncommon.Wearing a too-small bra is not as painful as wearing too-small shoes, but it's a lot like an adult squeezing into two-sizes-too-small Spandex. You can probably do it, but it won't look pretty or feel comfy, and you'll grow to hate the product. Or worse, you'll blame yourself.A website for the Fitting Room, a small bra boutique in the Chicago area, features a blog post by owner Bex Anderson on the topic. She said that instead of blaming sizing for an ill-fitting bra, women behave "as if somehow, somewhere, (they) were told that their bodies were abnormal: 'I have very odd-shaped breasts,' 'I have an abnormally large back,' 'I am extremely hard to fit,' 'One of my breasts is much smaller than the other.'?"Anderson said that the comments were usually not true or were highly exaggerated, but that the women had already lost confidence because of a series of bad experiences with bad bras.Then she states something that can't be stated emphatically enough, "It's not you!"BRA BY ANOTHER SIZEThe developers of Jockey's "reinvented" bra sizing system spent years scanning more than 800 female bodies to design a new迷你倉價錢bra that has a new measuring system.Instead of A, B, C, etc., the brand has 10 "volumetric" fit cup sizes from 1 to 10. Instead of measuring the cup size with a tape measure, the company sends customers a set of 10 cups shaped enough like breasts to make it really uncomfortable displaying them on your desk at work.Women are instructed to lean forward into the cup without a bra and rise to make sure there's no gapping or spillage. A tape measure is included to measure the band size, which needs to be flat against the rib cage."The Jockey thing is really interesting because it negates" the connotation that a D-cup is more lascivious than an A-cup, Eagan said. "At the root it's pretty similar to the system I use, but I'm curious about how they came up with this ridiculous numbering system, but I figure it's because they want to make people buy Jockey bras since they are the only ones who use it."Still, Eagan says, whatever gets more women into better bras is fine with her."We realized that there was something wrong with measuring a three-dimensional shape in a two-dimensional fashion," said Sybil Cassara, the director of bra marketing at Jockey, who has been part of this new bra project for seven years.Traditionally, women take a measurement under the breast and then over the fullest part of their breast and do some subtraction to come up with a cup size. Sounds easy, except it isn't. Gravity can work against a proper measurement, and what about the fact that women typically do have one breast that differs in size from the other?The Jockey cups "really address the breast tissue issue," because women are instructed to pick the larger breast for the test. And because it's a physical, 3-D object, she said, the new cup system lets women assess the volume of their breasts, not just the circumference of their chests.Cassara said the result was not just a different size but a drastically different fit. She noted that cup sizes A, B, C, etc., didn't take into account A and a half or B and three-quarters."We have a combination of 10 cups and seven bands (30 to 42 inches) for 55 different sizes, so it's the closest to custom," Cassara said.Eagan carries traditional and European bra sizes ranging from 28A to 48K (21 bands and 15 cup sizes), which Eagan said equated to 165 bra sizes, and she carries at least one of each. Jockey has started with a limited range but insists that the old system established in 1932 needs to be revised."We looked at it in a totally different way. It's iPhone versus handheld; it's a totally different technology," she said.Jockey has five bra style options in three colors that each retail for $60 in the new system, and the company promises not to discontinue any style ever, so your favorite bra will always be available. To start, you'll have to order a kit ($19.95, shipping included and $20 off your first order) from jockey.com/jockeybra or visit select Jockey stores to get fitted for free.Check out Deb's Style File at stltoday.com/stylefile to find out what we thought of the Jockey fit and more on finding the right bra.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉庫