So true! And I HAVE finally gotten competently professionally fitted (32H, G-d help me) and therefore priced out of all but the saddest-looking, most expensive bras in the expensive specialty stores around here, but when I tell salesladies or friends in, say, Gap or wherever, they're lean forward and say triumphantly, "but have you been professionally fitted? That's not a size. We/they can do it right here!" Once I let a saleswoman in Nordstrom's (in Canada, so ersatz Nordstrom's with a mere shadow of the stock in a real one) give me a 36DD sports bra. I shouted with laughter trying to shoehorn myself into it and she called through the door, "it fits? Good! We have one more in that unusual size!"
This isn't even the main point (and I totally agree about detachable boobs), but "women have much nicer bodies than men!" Or "women are more beautiful than men!" coming from men is the ultimate vastly irritating sexist "compliment" that is really just "my gaze is the only gaze!"/"my boner is the most important!"/"women are more beautiful therefore they're the ones who have to groom themselves and wear deodorant and be dressed up, and men can be scruffy unwashed lumberjacks, because biology!" Etc. It took me until this year to get my father to acknowledge that this is problematic when he says it, EVEN if he means it in a positive way. I'm still not entirely sure it stuck.
Oh man, I was also groped by judgmental, forbidding Soviet immigrant ladies (did you go to the Bra and Girdle Factory too?) when I was twelve, because I couldn't fit into the training bras my mother got for me and asked for bras more support. She was offended at that, so in retaliation she she took me to that place, which was mostly geared towards old ladies who like band-aid-colored, steel-reinforced bras. They "measured" me and declared me a 36C. I was probably actually a 28F or something, so thus began 18 years of wearing the wrong bra size (migraines, backaches, involuntary bad posture, grooves in the shoulders, the dreaded quadraboob, boobs slithering out of the band if I ran too fast, the bra coming partially unhooked by itself). But I'd been measured by an expert, or so I thought, so I just thought I had sadly weird boobs that couldn't fit into any bras properly. I think they actually didn't have any sizes smaller than 36C, so that's what they said I was. I'm still pissed at them.
I hear you! I wear Lands End exercise capris that are at least one size too big, and my rotating ancient oversized cotton t-shirt collection (from all my jobs and educational institutions) to work out, and I get tons of weird looks because I'm the only woman who's not in skintight pink-and-black lycra. I think they think I accidentally wore my pajamas to the gym.
I had this very modestly endowed friend who was into lots of woo-tastic stuff and "invented" her own "yoga" and I was willingly her guinea pig for some of her "yoga" routines (which were pretty comfortable overall but not real yoga). But I had to explain to her more than once that I can't do this or that exercise in her series because boobs in the way.
GAAAAH damn halternecks. NO. For me they are the "you're busty so you always wear wrap dresses!" of bathing suits.
When we had three days in London en route to M. Siniichulok's home country, we chose a hotel based on its proximity to a brick-and-mortar Bravissimo/Pepperberry store. I don't even really like Bravissimo bras all that much (after a long day they kind of feel like they're chewing on me), but trying on bras and especially CLOTHES that fit perfectly IN THE STORE and weren't hideously expensive (that is, the bras were cheaper than in Canadian specialty stores and the clothes were on the high end of what I'd ever spend but I didn't care), and seeing salesladies who belonged in the store's demographic and totally rocked the clothes was AMAZING. It seriously made me want to move there. (And by "there" I mean a Bravissimo/Pepperberry store.)
I'm hoping this happens to me with my next pregnancy! Thank you!
I started out 34F (actually a-smidgen-over-32F but I bought 34F bras) and ended up a 32H, I'm sorry to say. While I was breastfeeding, my bras were all G/I. I always wanted to kick pregnancy books that were all, "be happy, pregnant gals! Now you finally have cleavage, so flaunt it! You might even be up to a *D CUP!!*" in the ASS. I also found postpartum that Canadian specialty stores typically don't order many (or any) smaller-than-34-band-size-and-larger-than-F-cup-size bras, so I sized out of the really expensive, pretty bras into the really REALLY expensive ugly bras. But I'm going to try your recommendation of Nordstrom's as soon as I move back down south.
Those are my favorites too! I don't know why THEY'RE not everywhere. They're so much better!
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Medley