Today I walked into the local mall wearing a size S shirt (a trifle tight in the shoulders and sleeves, the curse of a weight-lifting woman) and a size S skirt (a fair bit large on me, actually – US brand bought in the Netherlands). I walked out again with a couple of shirts size M and a bathing suit size XL.
Yes, these are all for me. Yes, they all fit, though the bathing suit could be better.
The part I didn’t mention over on Avontuur, because I doubt Rudder’s grandfather really wants to read about my bra-shoppping, is that I also walked out with the beginnings of a conviction that I will never buy a sports bra in this country. For one thing, they all had foam cup inserts. Now my criteria for a sports bra is more about what it shouldn’t do than what it should. It shouldn’t chafe, bind or be too hot – basically, it should be more comfortable to wear it than not to. (That’s probably true for most women come to think of it – it just takes different factors to make us that comfortable.) You will notice that for me, support isn’t in the equation, at least not for rowing or lifting though I do want a little for things like mountain biking or off-road driving. Neither is looking good. I don’t care if it looks like I have a monoboob, as long as I can move. Also, the cups were all too close together – I guess they were made for people with narrower rib cages.
The regular bras confirmed this. I wear a 32C. In the US and the Netherlands, it’s easy to find a C cup, hard to find it with that small a band. Here, there are lots of 32s, but C is about the largest cup size I saw. And again, the cups seemed to be set too close together.
Oh well, add a few more things to the shopping list for whenever I get to America next.
You may be able to do something that wouldn’t (didn’t) work for me. Back in the day, it was very hard to find 32D’s without going to an expensive specialty shop — and my mother worked in Bloomingdale’s.
So she would bring me a 34D and say, “take it in.” It didn’t work very well because then the cups were too far apart. So maybe if you bought a 34C and took it in a smidge on each side, it would move the cups farther apart?
Yes, I can see where the narrower Asian body type would make undergarment shopping difficult. Though I would LOVE to find a sports bra with good soft cups and decent support. Monoboob is bothersome to me not only from aesthetic standpoint, but it’s physically uncomfortable and makes it hard to breathe. The two sports bra method is even worse, though I have friends who swear layering a wide strap over a racer-back really cuts the bounce and shoulder issues.
The mind boggles over how tough finding a 32 band size with any cup larger than a B must be. As one with her own bra woes you have my utmost sympathy. ~LA