Bra Fitting 101, Part 2

I’ve recently educated myself about bras – their sizing, fit, cut, etc. The most shocking thing I learned was that 80% of women are wearing the wrong sized bra!! Guess what... I was one of those 80%, but not any more! 

This is part 2 of a 3-part series talking about bra fitting. Part 1 touched on how a bra works, and common problems women face when fitting bras. Today I will be showing you one of my bras that I thought fit perfectly, until I learned the truth *duh duh duuuuuh* 

These are the bras I’m going to use for my demonstrations! The ill-fitted bra, to the left, is a 34C, which is the size I have been wearing for the past decade. The well-fitted bra, to the right, is a 30E. It sounds like a ridiculous size, but stay tuned for part 3 and it will all make sense. (they look better worn under the tank, I promise) 

They look pretty similar, right? WRONG! 

Of the common fitting problems I mentioned in part 1, this old bra has almost all of them, and the new bra has none! Check it out: 

This old bra’s band is WAAAYYYYYYY too big!!! Look at this stretch!! What’s wrong with this, you ask? Well, this band is doing nothing for support, so the only thing that possibly could support my breasts are the bra straps. The band should be able to stretch just a tiny bit. I’m actually between sizes for the band, and I rounded up, so even my new bra stretches a little more than a *perfect* bra should. 

This old bra’s band rides up my back. This happens when you use the straps to give support, rather than the band. The downside of this? Upper back/shoulder problems. Maybe not now, but it will catch up with you. The band should sit parallel to the floor, and the straps should be just tight enough that they’re not falling off your shoulders, like my pretty new bra on the right. 

This old bra’s gore does not touch my sternum (hard to tell when there’s a shirt in the way). This is a sign that the cup is too small. If the gore is lifted away from the sternum, the bottom tissue of the breast is left unsupported. It also likely means that you are smooshing your breasts in towards your chest, which leads to breast tissue migration... Ya, it can move. It packs up its bags and heads for your sides and even your back, giving you “fat” on your back. But you don’t have a fat back... you have migrated tissue. The shirt makes it hard to see in these pictures, but my new bra does sit flat against my sternum. 

This old bra’s underwire cuts into my breast tissue under my arms. It isn’t painful or irritating, but that don’t make it right! This is another sign that the cup is too small, and furthers the problem of your breast tissue picking up and heading East and West. The grass is always greener on the other side. Again, it’s hard to tell what’s going on under the shirt, but my new bra catches all my tissue and keeps it up front. 

Now, this old bra does not give me the dreaded quad-boob. None of my bras did. That was my only source of gauging fit once upon a time. BUT if I push the gore into my sternum, where it’s supposed to be, out spill the boobs! Meaning that, once again, the cup is too small. 

Now that you have seen the difference between a bra that is completely wrong and a bra that fits properly, stay tuned for part 3 where I’ll tell you all about the method I used to measure myself for my new bras.