Breast Dressed

N.B: this blog is somewhat of a companion to my ‘Panty Problems: Just Say No’ post from about a year ago. If talk of lovely lady lumps and the like offends, please tune out. Now. Love, Peg.

Travel is a real eye opener. New sights, new sounds, new discoveries (square sausage, black pudding and haggis FOR THE WIN).

And, of course, new shops, trends, and dress norms to explore.

Discovery #1: Uggs cost 60 POUNDS in Scotland and thus are highly coveted sartorial status symbols.

Discovery #2: Scottish women are impervious to cold and will attend a February wedding (read: 2 degrees celcius, fog and light mist) in a summer cocktail frock.

Discovery #3: the boobs of the UK are the Best Dressed Breasts the world over.

Why, might you ask?

Well, there’s just so much CHOICE in terms of bras. Walking into a lingerie shop, or a lingerie department in a major department store, is like walking into a candy store of lace, silk, and general delectability. Everything – and I mean everything – is lovely – and, more importantly, available in all sizes. What could be more heavenly, I ask you?

It’s as if British manufacturers have taken a good look out the window, around the office, and at the nearest girl’s night out and stumbled upon a powerful truth that I wish they’d exported to the antipodes along with convicts, rabbits, noxious weeds like thistles.

That truth being that boobs come in all sizes and shapes, and so should bras.

Historically, my relationship with bras, and my breasts, has been long and somewhat tortured. I developed early – I can’t really remember what life was like B.B. (Before Boobs). My first bras, which MamaK sensibly insisted were fitted by a trained professional, were rather plain and boring, with no fancy embellishments or anything vaguely resembling prettiness. At the time, this made bra-wearing anything but fun (although I am actually thankful that I could save the discovery of sexy lingerie until I was old enough to appreciate it in its proper context – i.e. sixteen, and doing everything that girls of that age are supposed to…). Coupled with change room teasing through primary and high school – contrary to popular mythology, girls who develop well and early are not always placed on a lofty pedestal of developing womanliness by their young peers – this potent combination of ugly bras + ugly people meant that I drew the only conclusion I could at the time: breasts, specifically mine, were ugly.

I spent most of my teenage years wishing my breasts away, desperately envious of girls who could get away with nothing under their tee-shirts whilst I needed industrial strength scaffolding to stay afloat. I think, in the chronology of my relationship with my breasts, these were The Wilderness Years.

Then, something wonderful happened: I went to college. In the ACT system, college is where students go in years 11 and 12 – so you’re a YOUNG ADULT at a school with other YOUNG ADULTS where you’re treated like a YOUNG ADULT and you can talk about YOUNG ADULT stuff like SEX and DRUGS and ROCK AND ROLL. Or, more like, your aspirations towards those three lofty goals of YOUNG ADULThood. It was there, in that heady, sweaty mix of all of us working out who we were and who we wanted to be, that I realised two things: that boys like boobs, and that boys like boobs FULL STOP. No matter how big, how little, how round or high or wide, boys LIKE THEM, quite possibly more than they like anything else on God’s green earth.

Being perfectly honest, and at risk of being a Bad Feminist, this meant that I could finally begin to entertain the possibility that maybe I might like my breasts too, if I gave them half a chance. Giving my breasts half a chance meant setting them free from their functional scaffolding, and looking for other options that supported not only my breasts but my fledgling and fragile self esteem.

I can still remember the thrill of purchasing my first Really Sexy Bra and Knickers. As mentioned above, I was sixteen, and doing all those things that sixteen year olds do. As I’ve said many times before on this blog, we don’t always dress in a way that reflects who we are in the present moment, but who we are becoming, and who we want to be. And although I was confused and had a lot of growing up to do at that point, I wanted something that would make me feel strong, sexy, and powerful – and nothing was more a reflection of who I wanted to be than a chocolate brown French lace balconette bra and knickers set from Elle Macpherson Intimates. It cost me a weeks’ pay, but the boosts it gave were worth it.

Over the years, I’d estimate that my spending on lingerie would have been enough to have placed a down payment on a small apartment, but, no matter how poor I was, I always felt as though good – in both the practical and the aesthetic sense – lingerie was never a waste of money. Which is just as well because in Australia, you’d be hard pressed to find lingerie that fits both of those categories – practical and pleasing to the eye – without relaxing the purse strings considerably. This was something I was always happy to do, even if it meant having only one or two bras, and repairing them until it really was time to pension them off to the back paddock. This was fine whilst my breasts were in the ‘normal’ cup size range – from A to D – but, in my Honours year, whilst the rest of me stayed the same, my boobs jumped two cup sizes, into an E. Overnight. Literally. I went to bed with D’s and woke up with E’s.

Sometimes the universe burdens us in the strangest of ways.

Having breasts that were suddenly outside of Australian clothing’s ‘normal’ range meant that I was in for a rude shock. Whereas previously the lingerie world was my oyster, I was thrust into the barren wasteland of Full Figure Lingerie. My first ever foray into a specialist stockist of Full Figure Lingerie (a euphemism I grew to hate – why not call a spade a spade and just say Bras for Big Boobs?) involved tears in the change room. The sales girl did her best, but when I asked her for something sexy, all she could produce was a hackneyed red and black number so massive that it encroached into my décolletage and flattened my breasts into two squarish blobs. I bought the bra, in the two colour ways available, because it was the best of a bad lot. There were other, prettier bras available in E cups – but they were out of stock, on backorder with a two month wait list, and completely beyond my financial means.

The second period of Wilderness commenced. This was only slightly better than the last Wilderness, as I at least knew in my heart of hearts that my breasts were indeed lovely, but this knowledge made shopping for bras more frustrating – I felt as though all of my breast’s loveliness was literally being squished out of them. Some days I even went bra-less, because it was simply too depressing to contemplate putting on some of the horrors that now comprised my lingerie wardrobe. After much thought, I decided that the problem with the Full Figure Lingerie industry was that their Ideal Breast, for which they designed all their bras, was a completely different shape to mine, with completely different needs. My problem was that my breasts, due to my large bone structure and impressive set of pectoral muscles (if I do say so myself – it’s carrying all those textbooks under my arm, I tell you) were actually firmer and higher than the Ideal Full Figure Breast, meaning that the bras available in Australia in an E+ cup were far far too supportive and rigid, with way more scaffolding than was necessary for someone with my frame and muscle structure. Whilst a very supportive, ridged bra, with a wide central panel and full cup coverage, would be ideal on a woman with a small rib cage, little muscle tissue and lots of boob, it was absolutely hopeless for me, and, what’s more, made my breasts look dreadful and made me feel dreadful.

There was an end, however, in sight. Mama-K, on a trip to Mother England midway through my honours year, came back with stories of an oasis of beautiful lingerie – in all shapes, sizes and colours – at Marks and Spencers. Being unsure of my exact size, and understandably feeling a bit awkward about shopping for sexy lingerie for her daughter, she bought me home just two Marks and Spencer’s bras to try. Although E cups, they looked…just like a lovely, ordinary lacy bra, complete with a low front profile, delicate straps, and transparent lace. I wore those two bras until they were grey with over washing, desperately hoping that one day I would make it to the promised land of Marks and Spencers, to rejoice in the loveliness of sexy bras in 14 E-F.

One Day finally came a few weeks ago, in Scotland, and it was better than I ever imagined.

The greatest thing about M&S was that there was no specialist section for Fuller Figure Bras – rather, most of their ranges just ran up to a G cup as a matter of course. This means no scarily wide centre panels, no full coverage cups, and no scary thick straps. No opportunity for manufacturers to charge through the nose because they’ve cornered the Full Figure Lingerie market – because all boobs are already catered for as a matter of course. M&S, as the locals call it, even stocks a range of post-mastectomy bras – something which, in Australia, you would have to hunt around specialty stores to find. You can even get scary huge squashy bras if that’s what floats your boat – everyone’s a winner. Here’s the bottom line: to buy a nice, lacy bra and pants in Australia, the outlay would be close to $150 at RRP, and your choices would be black and porny, pink/red and porny, or cream and virginal – just try and tell me that the Madonna/Whore paradox is dead! In the UK, shopping at M&S, the MAXIMUM you’d be looking at would be 50 pounds RRP – that’s about $100 in our money – and you can choose from dozens of lovely bras, with many levels of subtle graduation between vampish seductress and daisy fresh innocent. I won’t tell you how many sets of lingerie accompanied me home – but, to give you a ballpark figure, it’ll be at least a week before The Dreamboat has seen the full gamut of my UK purchases.

And the best thing of all? You can shop M&S online, and stand alongside me in my boycott of ugly, expensive Full Figure Lingerie that is all that’s available in Australia, or just ugly, expensive lingerie in whatever size you wear, because all breasts are beautiful and deserve to be dressed accordingly. Let’s not settle for lingerie that only uplifts our busts – rather, let’s strive for lingerie that uplifts our sometimes flagging and fragile egos, and elevates us to a higher plane of bodily acceptance and love. At least, I know that’s now where my personal bra bar is set, and I think you’re all, dear readers, worth a similarly high standard of support.