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this lovely lady got the thickness. can I get a hell yeah?

  • Aug. 27th, 2012 at 10:40 AM
criminal minds reid bitchy
Watching the media get science wrong again...

What this suggests to me, with a little simple math, is that the exercisers who did 60 minutes or more of moderate exercise (if they're burning 600 calories an hour, they ain't doing hard circuits or rock climbing) gained an average of 2.3 pounds of muscle, while the ones doing 30 minutes of moderate exercise gained an average of 1.1 pounds of muscle.

Which is... double the result.

I'd also be interested in hearing what their relative blood pressures and cholesterol counts were.

The health benefits of exercise are not chiefly about fat loss, no matter what fatophobic media would like us to think.

On a related note, I managed to chafe my cleavage with my run yesterday. I'm a big fan of Title Nine's Frog Bra (sadly, not currently available due to a spandex shortage, or something) but apparently 8.4 miles of rubbing against the edge of a heavy-duty compression bra was too much for my tender flesh.

There are special challenges in this world for large-breasted women. (I'm a 36F, and if I keep shrinking, likely to be a 34F or 34G by this time next year.) Coincidentally, there's an article on just this topic at Clutch today. I concur with the woman in comments who has nothing good to say about Victoria's Secret. I, too, have had the experience of having them shovel me into a bra with cups too small and a band too large. For those of you who are small-bosomed or have visible pectoral muscles rather than sacs of fat and mammary tissue up front, the band is the part that provides 90% of the support in a properly fitted bra.

Which just proves to me that Vickie's doesn't know shit about lingerie.

My go-to site for non-sports-bras has been, for years, Bravissimo. They have pretty bras that fit, which means not giving me quadriboob or major back pain or Morghul Bra Syndrome, where the underwire attempts to eat through to your heart and turn you into a brawraith.

Worth paying the shipping from the UK. Honestly. (Fig Leaves, the U.S. equivalent, does not seem to handle the upper end of the size ranges nearly as well.)

And they've been introducing sports bras.

Hmm. Well, it's royalty season. Maybe when my next check arrives, I'll look into replacing my beloved but apparently somewhat rough-seamed Frog Bras. (Seriously, I've had these things since 2001. I just retired one last year that dated from 1998 or so. They're that durable.)

Ave et vale, Frog Bra.
  • Current Mood: cynical cynical

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Comments

( Read 77 comments — Leave a comment )
mrissa
Aug. 27th, 2012 02:59 pm (UTC)
I do not exercise to lose fat. I need the fat I have. It keeps me menstruating and other important stuff. And yet I exercise every day! How could this be? Legions of journalists so confused. Well. There there, journalist dears. "Cardiovascular" is a big word, but dictionaries do know it. ("Strong" is not such a big word. The other words involved get complicated and personal.)

Seriously, Vickie's can bite me. They've done that thing to me, too, where they try to tell you that the band larger and the cup smaller is "really the same." I think this mostly works on people who have not been able to find their real size and think that band sizes don't go below 34 and cup sizes don't go above DD, so if it looks like they would be going one way or the other, they would have to get stuck with whatever. I am frustrated and sad that my solutions involve throwing money at the problem, though, because I know that lots of my friends do not have the money to throw. Cheap good bras in sizes not available at Target! That should be somebody's rallying cry somewhere.
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matociquala
Aug. 27th, 2012 03:05 pm (UTC)
Amen.

Also, their bras kind of suck.

They do make good stockings, though.
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mrissa
Aug. 27th, 2012 03:10 pm (UTC)
Good to know.

Every once in awhile they used to send my mother a "free panties" coupon. She did not want their panties but would get them for me, because, hey, free is a good price. But this baffled her: how did she get on the mailing list for a free panties coupon in the first place? (She figures they kept sending them to her because they checked whether the coupon got used, not whether they actually got used with purchase etc.)
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cathshaffer
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:18 pm (UTC)
Even the existence of a size like 36F or 34F kind of shows how screwed up bra sizing is. For a true F cup, in order to fit all of that mammary tissue into 36 inches of bust measurement, a woman would have to have the rib cage of a boa constrictor. I usually wear a 36B, but I know for a fact my bust is 39 inches. Even considering that bras are not sized in one-inch band increments, being that far off is ridiculous. I suspect you are both getting correct advice about what the band and cup size *should* be, based on the way bras are supposed to be sized, but size inflation strikes again resulting in nonsensical sizes like 34F (really?). (Back when I had a true 34 inch bust, I was wearing an A cup, and had a pretty typical rib cage/chest size for a small woman.)
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sister_bluebird
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:30 pm (UTC)
Cup sizing is proportional to band size, so a 44F and a 34F do not have the same volume. I suspect that when you think of a 34F as "ridiculous," you are picturing absolute cup sizes. Also, the number refers to the band, not the overbust, so women with large cup sizes are not fitting "all of that mammary tissue into 36 inches of bust measurement". My best friend is a 34J, which produces about a 45 inch overbust measurement. It's not size inflation at all.
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cathshaffer
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:43 pm (UTC)
Not true. The number in the bra size is overbust. The cup is difference between the band size and overbust measurement. For a D cup, the difference between the two measurements should be six inches, so to have a 36F, you need a woman with a 36 inch bust and a 30 inch chest. That's *really* small, and I guarantee you it is not our hostess's measurements. Bras today are not made to match the sizing scheme, which is one reason bra shopping is so hopeless.
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akiko
Aug. 27th, 2012 08:48 pm (UTC)
I have a friend who has the same overbust measurement as me--38". I'm a 36D. She's a 30I, I think. Yes, her ribcage is tiny. You don't realize it because normal clothes are baggy, but if you hug her, you really notice.
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lebannen
Aug. 28th, 2012 12:22 am (UTC)
Here, have a vast amount of information about bra sizes!

I find that my feet may be either a 38 or 39 (or a 5 1/2, or a 6, or a US 7), and some clothes fit in size n while others might fit in size n+1, and I have never found that Adidas shoes or Top Shop jeans fit me at all, so it also doesn't surprise me that some of my bras are different sizes than others, and that some allegedly the same size don't fit at all.

And the only time I go around telling people that their clothes aren't the right size for them, is when my boyfriend has put on weight and hasn't noticed how bad his once-favourite shirt now looks.
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matociquala
Aug. 28th, 2012 01:49 am (UTC)
Oh, the loss of once-favorite clothing to weight loss or gain is a great personal tragedy.

I have just retired a skirt and a pair of jeans. Alas!
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lebannen
Aug. 28th, 2012 09:23 am (UTC)
When I ripped the backside out of not one but two pairs of working jeans last winter, and discovered that I could no longer fit into my second-favourite jeans, the only bright point was retrieving a once-favourite pair from storage.
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lenora_rose
Aug. 31st, 2012 03:46 pm (UTC)
IME, the people at the stores who know what they`re talking about and how to size say the band size (And one part of the link below) is based on the ribcage below the bust, not the bust itself. I`m surprised you`ve been told otherwise. I`m curious where you got this from. (Honestly so; if I`m getting wrong info, I`d like to know.)
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cathshaffer
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:59 pm (UTC)
I just went to read the wikipedia page on bra sizing, and it sounds like the whole concept of band size and cup size is sort of a consensual hallucination complicated by vanity sizing. What a hoot. Nothing beats trying a bunch of bras on, I guess!
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cathshaffer
Aug. 27th, 2012 06:52 pm (UTC)
I just wanted to pop back and say this whole conversation has inspired me to want to shop for a new bra and possibly try on some sizes I hadn't considered. I just went around and used about 8 bra size calculators to find out what size I'm supposed to be. Most of them came up with sizes I think are too big. I got everything from 34C to 40C to even 36D. I hadn't realized there was so MUCH chaos in the bra sizing world. So thanks!
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mrissa
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:34 pm (UTC)
I wear a 32F. Boa constrictor ribs if you like, but I can tell you for sure what doesn't fit--and I really don't have typical rib cage/chest size for a small woman.
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cathshaffer
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:44 pm (UTC)
Check out my comment above. I promise you don't measure for a 32F, and probably no one human does.
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cathshaffer
Aug. 28th, 2012 01:04 am (UTC)
I wanted to update my comment. It would be hard to size someone for a 32F based on the bra sizing method I learned in the 80's, but that doesn't seem to be much in use anymore. There are at least 3 alternate methods, all of which seem to yield too-large a size. I do still think that needing to purchase sizes like 32F is somehow an artifact of vanity sizing--things having been manipulated so that the "average" 36C bra has cups that the average woman could wear on her head. It doesn't really matter how sizes are figured, as long as it's consistent, which it's not. *sigh*

The nice thing here is that this discussion prompted me to re-evaluate the size I was wearing. I had been wearing 36B for a long time, but I checked out some different sizes and a 34D turned out to be a much better and much more flattering fit. Yay!

Sorry to fill up your journal with so much bra neepery, Bear!
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matociquala
Aug. 28th, 2012 01:57 am (UTC)
If you don't believe Marissa wears a 32F, you've obviously never seen her in a tight dress. Some women just have rather large boobs. And an F cup on a broad-shouldered woman is not as dramatic as you might think, based on the breasts of size zero Hollywood types.

I wore a 36B in college (I think I was probably a 34C, but I was still listening to Vickie's nonsense then) and my breasts have, indeed, grown since then--partly because some women's breasts do, and partly due to weight gain.

I've been using the same sizing method since high school, and I have bras I wore when I was wearing a 36C and also a 38DD. They really do not fit any more. I should probably throw them out, but the ones I've kept have sentimental value. ;-)

Some people really are F cups, and it's not THAT uncommon. (I have a friend who wears an H, and another friend I don't dare speculate about.)

I think possibly somebody gave you some bad information a long time ago!
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cathshaffer
Aug. 28th, 2012 02:16 am (UTC)
I'm sorry if I was unclear. I am not doubting the existence of an F cup. (I mean, really, that's kind of dumb. Do I live on the planet of flat-chested women or something? :-) What I am saying is that based on the old school bra sizing method I learned way back when, it would be very hard to get a size like 32F, because the number on the band was supposed to be your actual bust size at the widest part. 32 inches is a very small bust measurement for any adult woman, so that woman would have to be very tiny to have an F cup and still measure 32 inches around the bust. That would be about a 26 inch rib cage--not something you see on an adult woman. I grew up sewing a lot--sewing with my grandmother, sewing my own clothes, sewing barbie clothes, etc., and any time a size is given for anything on "top," it's the bust measurement at the widest part. Always the bust. Nothing is sized based on the measurement of your ribs.

Now what people are talking about here is a different way of calculating bra size, using the number as the measurement around the rib cage. Yet another method, according to the internet, is taking the rib cage measurement and arbitrarily adding 3 or 4 inches. And, finally, there's the Victoria's Secret method, where you use a chest measurement above the bust, under the armpit, as your band size. I went around the internet plugging in my actual measurements to see what my "bra size" would be, and I got sizes as disparate as 34C, 38B, and 40C. My conclusion is that bra size actually doesn't translate to a measurement you can get with a tape at all.

I do think vanity sizing comes into play here because even though dress sizes have changed, and today's size 8 or 10 is significantly bigger than it was twenty years ago, the average bra size is still supposedly an unchanging 36C. Using one's own breasts to track the drift of bra sizes, though, has obvious drawbacks. I myself have had a baby in the interim, so nothing is the same.
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matociquala
Aug. 28th, 2012 02:24 am (UTC)
I'm saying I think somebody gave you bad information about how to size a bra back in the day, since I learned the same method I use now when I started wearing them, and have used it consistently since--with refinements, because I figured out that Vickie's was lying when they said I could wear a 36B instead of a 34C.

Also, I should point out that the average American bra size has actually gone up rather a lot in the past twenty years, let alone thirty--from 34B to 36C, if I remember correctly, but I am too lazy to look it up. There's a good deal of controversy as to why this is--the average American butt has also gained in size!--but since girls are reaching puberty earlier, it may be caused by the same environmental factors that is--and people are divided as to whether that's higher average body mass index, estrogen mimics in the environment, or a greater prevalence of things like hormones in milk. (Or environmental antibiotics--which are, after all, given to cattle to fatten them up faster.)

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cathshaffer
Aug. 28th, 2012 02:33 am (UTC)
Oh, sure, it's possible I had it wrong back then. However, even using the measurement=band method, I get the wrong size. That would give a 36C for me, and I've not found a 36C in any brand or style that fits. (Too big.)
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matociquala
Aug. 28th, 2012 02:37 am (UTC)
Huh. I usually stick to UK brands. I wonder if that makes a difference.
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joycemocha
Aug. 28th, 2012 04:15 am (UTC)
One datum in all of this is that sizes do change. I hung on to some of my old pre-pregnancy 36C bras for the longest time, hoping things would change (or that I would shrink). Nope. Even now, in menopause, I'm now a 32DD. A bigger band and smaller cup really doesn't work, and now things are even more not fitting. The last time I tried a 32D, the band was right but the cup was too tight. But a DD cup is too big...it's very subtle but definitely slightly big. And 34 D is just ridiculous.
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cathshaffer
Aug. 28th, 2012 12:59 am (UTC)
I've seen a couple of responses to this that showed up in email, but have not shown up here...? Anyway, I want to note that I stand corrected. The bra sizing method I learned back in the 80s doesn't seem to be much in use anymore. Current methods of bra sizing are wildly inconsistent. I tried a few online bra size calculators based on my own measurements, and came up with wildly disparate sizes, most of them much too big for me.
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freyaw
Aug. 28th, 2012 06:41 am (UTC)
The band up/cup down really doesn't work. I have found that shop assistants stop suggesting it when you gently pull up on the shoulder straps and the whole thing rides up, flips over your boobs and then you take it off over your shoulders without stretching the fabric or undoing anything.

I got my first sports bra that was an actual sports bra that fit without me altering it last year. I bought all of them that they had in AU8B in the store. It's awesome! :D
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( Read 77 comments — Leave a comment )

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