It’s so bad that my fiancée has some bras that say she’s a B cup and others that says she’s a D cup. In order to go bra shopping, you have to actually try them on to find out if they fit.
If I had to try on underwear to see if they fit, I might not bother with underwear at all!
The same time I learned it was like that for all women’s clothing. So about 18
Around 19, I’d say. 42 now.
There are plenty of brands that follow mostly standard sizing, as I understand it. But popular brands in the US (like Victoria Secret) generally don’t.
I fell down the r/abrathatfits rabbit hole one day, years ago. It’s fascinating.
I once talked to my girlfriend about bra sizes and how much i don’t understand them. Then we both googled bra sizes and how often women wear the wrong size and fit and all. It’s a whole science behind it and it’s quite interesting. Now, 10 years later i still often think: oh no, she wears a bra that doesn’t fit right and probably doesn’t even know it.
Yup! “Oh, she should probably go down a band size and up a cup size” popped into my head one day and I laughed at the absurdity.
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit, because she’d never known any of it. No one taught her. Made me feel vaguely guilty of mansplaining, but it helped!
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit
How? like, I don’t want to mansplain her, but I don’t want her desconfortable just because it’s using the wrong size
Not to point to the other site, but r/ABraThatFits is a great place to start. They have guides and stuff. It’s fascinating.
I’m gay, so current age I guess
I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it’s insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.
There shouldn’t be anything preventing me from figuring out women’s bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don’t know them and they probably don’t want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.
I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements.
Men’s pants are sized based on the number of inches around the waist and the inseam. The inseam is stupid because it ignores the height from the waist to the crotch so relaxed fitting jeans will have a shorter inseam than a regular fit. I’m sure it is because it was standardized when higher waisted jeans and overalls and that kind of stuff was popular.
But it doesn’t matter any more because the waist sizes can be off by a few inches anyway. It was literal, then became kind of close. Not as bad as women’s clothing, but it is brand specific depending on how hard they lean into vanity sizing.
Yet another reason why I don’t wear pants.
waist sizes matter less because theres at least a commonly used bandaid fix for it, a belt.
Unless they are tighter than expected, especially when they shrink.
of course, hence when given the option, always buy the waist oversized rather than perfectly matching. because youll never know if it decreases.
OP is wrong. Bra size is the ONLY women’s sizing that is related to specific measurements. It can still take a while to find a comfortable fit based on shapes, but the sizes are standardized across good brands.
Starting point to find the size: Measure the rib cage right under the bust. If even, that’s the number; if odd, round up. Measure the largest size around the bust. Subtract underbust from bust measurements. 1” = A, 2” = B, 3=C, 4=D.
It gets confusing from there in the US because instead of going alphabetically, the US just adds a D for every inch after 4 until some arbitrary letter then goes back to the alphabet. Using UK sizes just follows the alphabet and so is very simple.
I never knew per se, I just assumed that like with all women’s clothing sizes are a convenient fiction
When going for brands, like Lounge Underwear or even more expensive ones like Marlies Dekkers, Aubade or Lise Charmel (instead of cheap imports from China) there’s almost never a problem with the size. There have been maybe 2 or 3 bras (cheap ones) that did not fit in the last twelve years and everything else has the same size and fits her.
This old.
Have her go and get fitted. Many women don’t know what their band/cup size really is.
Also, IMO, women’s pant sizes are where the real absurdity in sizes is.
Not much help to know what cup size you are if the bra companies are only pretending to be standardized
Only knowing your cup size is not enough. You need to know the underbust size as well. A 32D and a 34C have cups with the same volume. Sure, there is still some variance but not as much as I thought before I learned that.
Edit: This calculator and the community of the same name on the-site-that-shall-not-be-named helped me a lot in finding my actual bra size. Now my only problem is that almost no company here has more than two or three bras in that size…
And it is more complicated even than that. I am a small busted woman and yet the best fit I can get is 34D. The 34 makes sense, underbust is 33. The D is what I measure but most have too much room. I still need that size because the circumference of the boobs fits in that wire; any smaller is too narrow.
I think bras need 3 measurements not 2. I need band 34, wire size D, cup capacity closer to C. And there are plenty of women in the opposite situation too, with more projection but smaller circumference.
So the non-standardized sizing is a workaround for that problem.
Yeah, the two measurements are really not enough to fit all the different boob shapes. And just offering different shapes with the same two measurements leads to problems for those who otherwise could rely on the two alone.
I have that problem with trousers where one measurement for width is not enough to fit both my waist and my hips. With bras it’s just that apparently you can’t have more than B or at maximum C if your underbust is 28/30. According to companies at least.
Yeah and what anyone thinks is a 32b is probably a 32E or something. Again with the wire circumference! A 32b is like a shot glass not a champagne glass. I can tell any guy I’m an A or B cup because that’s what they “look like”, and I agree.
I just started thinking of them as numbers all, no letters. So I am wearing 34+4. That’s not big, a +4 just means 4" difference underbust to bust, and some of that is lats, not boobs!
Interesting website! I’ll have to remember to try this when I can find where I put my tape measure.
Personally, once I found bralettes I’ve never gone back. My boobs are small enough that they work just fine. The comfort level has gone up by like ten billion. Bras without underwire come in second but still not the greatest. I just can’t really understand bras with underwire.
Tbh, I’m able to go braless under loose fitting sweaters, but for any other shirt, I just don’t have the right boob shape for it.
I think underwire is more important the larger your breast volume is. I was recently at an event with a bunch of women who’ve known each other for a long time and we did a game where an emcee asked a question and then we went to a side of the room that fit our personal answer. One of them was 1) underwire, 2) no wire, 3) no bra. As I shuffled over to the underwire side, one of my pals joked that this was just a way to separate us by breast size. And sure enough, those of us with the wires tended to be on the heavier-cupped side, and the small number of no-bra ladies were quite petite.
I tried bralettes once and they didn’t work for me at all. I’m too big for them to provide any support so they just buckled, essentially. It’s a bummer because some of them are so cute! But my girls are just too heavy. And the only thing that keeps them in line is the damn wire. I will say that being fitted correctly does help the wire feel more comfortable though.
Oh believe me, I fully get that I have a bit of “small boob privilege” in terms of being able to wear bralettes. Do the non-bralette, non-underwire bras still not work for you though? They seem to provide a decent amount of support, but idk how they work for everyone.
They still buckle a bit unfortunately, unless they’re a full-on sports bra that is squashing them as hard as possible and giving me the monoboob look. I’ve also found that a properly fitted bra that has the wire for structure actually makes me look slimmer overall, probably because my band size is actually on the narrower side. So I’ll occasionally wear the one non-wire bra I have when I don’t care as much about it looking good under my clothes. But even then, when it buckles on the side, the bra still kind of sticks out under my arms so it’s still uncomfortable.
Agree on all points! When I was had my first grownup job I was trying to build up my wardrobe and found a pair of jeans that fit and felt great. Size 3. I went back after another paycheck to get an identical third pair and when I got home, they were practically falling off of me. I had to exchange them for a 1, which was still larger than the size 3s from just a month or two earlier.
But a fitted bra? One of my best purchases ever. Getting in the right size resolved about 70% of my chronic back pain. Fit is different between bra types but decent brands’ sizes are standardized, regardless what OP says.
Right now…
Europe, my beloved…
Its even different in different parts of the world. Related Wiki: wikipedia-bra size
The cup size SHOULD be the difference in inches between the circumference below the breast and circumference around the breast.
3" difference would be a C cup
5" would be DD.
Why they double up some letters and not others, I couldn’t tell you. 🤷🏻♂️
My ex used to sell underwear.
When I was 25, my girlfriend complained about buying the same bra, same size, same material, same URL, from the same company, on their website, 2 years apart. The first ones fit really well, the second ones didn’t fit at all.
Meanwhile, there’s a shoe that I buy a pair of every few years. They release a new “version” about once per year, but the fit has been consistent, so I’m over a decade, and 6 pairs, into my purchase of them, with no problems.
It’s wild to me that people just buy the same shoe over and over. I’m not a fashionista by any stretch of the imagination; I just have one, maximum two, pair(s) of footwear per temperature slice, and I don’t even have any formal ones.
But even I would want something new, even if my old pair had served me well.
Shoes are the most obnoxious things to shop for. Buying what you know makes total sense.
Yeah, I hate shopping for shoes. Getting shoes that fit well is hard and trying different shoes sucks.
But even I would want something new,
They’re new shoes, not my old ratty ones
What can I say I found out at 14 that all-blacked converse hi-tops look good on me and so why bother changing
It used to be that any DC skating shoe size 12 for me. Could just pick a model and leave the store. Then they became a fashion brand rather than a skateboard brand and suddenly it was made for tiny model feet.
A got older with an older body I just get the Bondi8 for summer and Kaha for winter as HOKA does wide and quarter sizes.
I cut a check when the boob owner says it’s boob maintenance time. Why do I need to know anything about sizing?
Knowledge is power and it allows you to give a wider range of gifts if you know more
