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!
It is well standardized around here.
Well I don’t wear underwear at all already 😀
Username checks out
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.
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.
Today years old.
Clothing sizing in general is just arcane at this point.
This. I mostly buy size S t-shirts, sometimes M, occassionally XS. I dont even care anymore.
If the shirt isn’t xl, I can’t raise my hands without showing my belly.
Also if the shirt is bigger than L, I’m swimming in it.
I have a long torso and broad shoulders, so I have to get xl tall shirts in some brands because most make their standard xl shirts wider but not taller than med and small.
Banana Republic is the shortest length. Hurley is the best length.
Then there’s XXL and 2XL, which aren’t the same size for some bizarre reason
Tall sizes ftw
They’re so hard to find. I have to buy all my shirts at Eddie Bauer because 1) I’m a dad and 2) they’re one of the only stores that regularly carry them.
Some brands do slim sizes. Small shirts don’t cover my belt but mediums can be baggy on me, but medium slim fits perfectly.
I’m between a medium and a large. More often then not though, I need the shoulder width and arm length of a large, but the cut in the torso of a medium. Clothing manufacturers assume Americans scale horizontally as they scale vertically. This maybe true given our obesity crisis.
I just learned today since I’ve never been compelled to look up any sort of conversion chart, but I had a hunch because dress/pants sizes are all over the place. One brand’s mostly-honest 12 is another brand’s flattering 4, shit like that
It’s also the fact that cup size is not necessarily independent from band size, that’s where the trick is. I used to think I’m an A with a high band size as I’m huge with no booba, like a 39A or something but those never fit that well.
According to ABraThatFits methodology I’m actually 36C, which somehow does fit and super well, though by common and dudebro methodology I’m most certainly more of an “A cup” if that makes sense.
I’m a woman w
It’s because whatever maniac invented the sizing scheme decided that every letter represents 2 inches more around your body at the weirdest boobage point than just below it. What a bonkers system! A woman with 38B bras is 38 inches around at the band, and 40 inches around at the girls. Nonsense. The way dudes THINK it works makes so much more sense.
I’m both fat and tall. None of my fucking clothes have consistent sizes that fit. I’m not the least bit surprised that the clothing industry’s greatest minds were defeated by breasts.
I always figured it was like pants where a 34 waist from company A wouldn’t fit like one from B.
The same time I learned it was like that for all women’s clothing. So about 18
It was a long time ago that I realized that women’s clothing sizing was largely fiction. Trying to buy clothing for a girlfriend or (later) my wife based on the tag of something they already owned was an exercise in futility.
This might go some ways to explaining why I’ve never known a woman who liked buying or wearing bras. I’m comfortable blaming the patriarchy, which can absolutely get fucked.
My understanding is that some European countries have laws standardizing bra size.
However old i was when I first heard my mom complain about bra’s
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.
