cross my heart
I have one bra that is actually comfortable enough to wear for a whole day. I'm not talking about real comfort, the kind that women in commercials want us to believe a bra can provide. I'm talking about the level of comfort you reach after wearing braces for a month. You can sure as heck still feel them, but you can put the discomfort far enough to the back of your mind to enable you to register other thoughts, such as, "Must remember to buy oranges," "I wonder what FOX is going to air in the Ally time slot next year," or "My God, this bra is uncomfortable!"
Having only the one "comfortable" bra is not the situation I dreamed of as a young girl. Of course, I never planned to grow the kind of chestly protuberances that would require more than one or two hooks, either. When I got my first boob-wrangling contraption, I couldn't have imagined there would be anything more difficult about bra-wearing than that original initiation period wherein the hooking skill is acquired. I considered myself more advanced than the girls I saw in the locker room who started backwards - hooks in front - where they would hook, then rotate the cups to the front, insert the breasts into them, and only then apply the straps. I could hook in the back. With no visual. I ask you, what 7th grader can say that?
But from modest beginnings in junior high locker rooms, The Girls and I have blossomed. We've grown. Oh, how we've grown. I started as the "early developer" and ended up the "hourglass," only with several more minutes under the glass than I'd prefer. My hips are a pendulous 1.5 to 2 hours. To keep my corresponding bustular parts from being similarly pendulous, I require a sturdy brassiere. The Girls are not going to be sufficiently reined in by anything but an underwire. Steady scaffolding, overlaid with material of a spandex nature, is the only way to ensure public safety and provide me with the ability to walk relatively briskly, though certainly no faster than 4 miles per hour.
However, with the construction of the uber-bra comes the potential for peril. Specifically, pokiness. For instance, the underwire, if I understand the word coinage correctly, should be a wire that stays under the breast, keeping it from descending to a point on the chest more southerly than is preferable for a youngish woman. However, the underwire, in my experience, is in actuality more wire than under, unless "under" is meant to be an abbreviation of "underarm." More frequent than pit piercing, though , are the instances of cleavage carving, or "rib riddling," if you will.
I have not owned one underwire bra that died of old age. They were all struck down in their youth, having lived only a few months, a year, maybe, before the underwires speared out in a violent rage against death manifested as the attempted assassination of one of the twins.No, my bras don't live long lives. They will not attend PTA meetings, support the chest of a mother-of-the-bride, or relax beneath flowered, polyester elderclothes while keeping The Girls out of the way of the shuffleboard stick. There will be no porch rocking for them. Instead, they will grow weak in the amount of time it takes those Victoria's Secret bras to be worked into the rotation. Their hooks will strain, their straps will curl and twist, trying to find new positions in which to better support the terrible weight. And the underwires. The poor underwires. In short time, they will be thrust through the very fabric that encloses them. They will tear through their mother spandex in a frantic rush to escape the crushing, airless atmosphere of the underbreast, the prison to which they've been sentenced without knowing what they did to deserve such a fate.
This morning, knowing my "comfortable" bra had just been washed and would be hanging, unwearable, on the bathroom doorknob for a few more hours, I searched my skivvy drawer for some other support possibility. I pushed past the lavender beauty that had looked so comfy and appealing hanging on the rack at Target. Safely bought and home, it had proven to position my breasts in such an unlikely fashion that I found it unfit for public use. Its only application as yet has been to make me collapse in laughter, while wondering whether the person who produced its ill-conceived blueprint had ever, in fact, owned or seen a human, female breast.
Tucked into the bottom right corner of the drawer, I found the twin to Comfortable: Underwireless. Underwireless originally had underwires. When they screamed forth to freedom, I'd decided to try it without them. I will now pause for the laughter of busty women everywhere.
That left three options: Creaky, Scratchy and Bumpy. Creaky is an odd article. From somewhere in the depths of Creaky's scaffolding issues the wounded cry of a dying floorboard. It honestly sounds like a haunted house. So, unless I'm attending a rock concert, monster truck rally or some other very loud event, I can't really wear Creaky without a fair amount of embarrassment.
Scratchy is unhaunted, but amazingly unforgiving on the skin. I believe it is made of the stiffly cauterized edges of a thousand itchy clothing tags. I struggle to recall the way in which its grating cups shaped my chest. In fairness to Scratchy, it might be the most flattering undergarment ever produced. Certainly, it would have to be better than Lavender. Unfortunately, I can't bear to find out.
Having worked through the other conventional choices, and eschewing the sports bra (the uni-boob does not do justice to business-wear), I chose Bumpy, which I wear even as I type. In actual fact, I did not remember the particulars of Bumpy until I had been wearing him for a while. Oh, you think bras should be female? Was the Marquis de Sade female? Okay then. Anyway, what I had failed to recollect about Bumpy is that the underwires, while still contained within the doubly-reinforced fabric of the unit, strain against the material in the cleavage region such that they produce two protrusions, like tiny, dual cartoon head-bumps in the center of my chest. Bend and shape as I might, I have yet to work the wires into a position that is aesthetically pleasing without being too mammary-intrusive.
On the subject of aesthetically pleasing chest support, I'd like to address the issue of the bra for the boobularly-gifted. While I'm sitting here in Bumpy, bending underwires into submission, the A-B-C girls are going through their daily routines wearing lovely bras embroidered with flowers and curly-cues, bras that match their underwear, bras that hook in the front. I'll bet some of them have even eased their little darlings into those lovely demi-bras. Oh, how I'd love to own one of those! However, as I understand the prefix "demi," a demi-bra is something that either a) only partly covers the breast, or b) is made for women who only sort of have breasts. For me, I assume that The Girls would only sort of stay inside such a bra. When strangers came up to me on the street and warned, "One of your headlights is out," it's likely they wouldn't be talking about my car.
No, bras for girls like me are made for full coverage and ultimate support. They generally come in the following ultra-hip funky neon retro-punk colors: beige, dark beige, and white. We busty gals do not have bras that match our panties. We wear bras that have four hooks, inch-wide straps, buckles, cinches and counterweights. Our bras are functional, not pretty. Boy are they not pretty.
Oh, maybe someday they'll make bras that hold 'em up in style. Maybe they'll even retire the evil underwire and unveil a technology that will enable The Endowed to run and play with the other girls without fear of puncture. Until that time, please forgive me if I readjust in your presence. Don't be offended if you come to my house and I whip off the offending garment in the middle of dinner. The Girls and I, we're just trying to get by in a flat girls' world.
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written works © April Palleria, 2002