Boob Growth and Some Other Stuff

Hey guys! I have a fluid mechanics test coming up on Monday, so you know that means it’s time for me to write a new post 😛 My favorite form of procrastination!

So what prompted me to write this was realizing that my PL Mak, which when I first received it almost 3 months ago, was a little too big without the push up pads in place, now fits perfectly without them. Picture evidence:

Now

Before

Before

Now

Now. (Ignore the pit stain 😛 A college student with only 1 well fitted bra doesn’t have time to hand wash something very often! Haha)

Before

 

 

 

This is one of the reasons Ewa Michalak really meets my needs. Maybe the pictures don’t show it as well as I can see it, but this bra is much more full now than it was at the beginning of January. I don’t know if it was tissue migration, the fact that I’m only 19 and could well be experiencing breast growth still, or something else, but I love that with Ewa I can order a size up from what my “safe” choice would be and I don’t have to worry about it much. I also love that now that this bra doesn’t gape without pads, I can use them just for extra cleavage when I feel like it (and if I’m being honest, I always feel like it!). So yeah. If you know your boobs are growing (mine seem to have been growing steadily since around last April), ordering a cup size up in an Ewa Michalak bra that comes with removable pads is a good plan. I know that before I got this bra, I was having to buy a new bra in a higher cup size ever 3 months or so. I just do not have the money for that! I got three months out of this bra with the pads, so hopefully I’ll get at least three months out of it without the pads before it is just all around too small. That will still be twice the average life span of my bras prior to this.

The “other stuff” I mentioned in the title is just this little thought I had inspired by the semi-controversial Bras I Hate & Love post about using +2 instead of +0. I personally disagree, but to me it also doesn’t matter that much what the starting point is because I’m going to end up  just telling everyone to do what’s comfortable for them, and +0 is just more logical to me than +2 (I personally find it much easier to tell if a band is too small than if it’s too big) but that isn’t what my thought was about.

After reading the post, naturally I tried on a few bras to see if I was falling victim to the very tight band look that she had going on in 28 bands. When I saw that picture, it looked very uncomfortable! I thought, “Surely my back doesn’t look like that! Wouldn’t I have noticed?”. Then, she mentions strained hooks as a symptom of a too small band. And my super comfortable, perfectly fitted (in my opinion) PL Mak has strained hooks! So today I took a picture of what my back looked like in it, to see if it was indeed too small.

The hooks do appear strained, though not nearly as strained as the ones on the 28 bands in her post, but I don’t get the corset-like compression she describes. I think my back here does look similar to her well fitted 30s (it’s hard to see what the hooks in her well fitted bras look like because her example is a darker bra and it’s a rather dark photo).

But the hooks on this bra do look pulled out when I take it off. But the more I looked at all my bras… all of my hooks look strained.

28K PL Mak hooks

28J Tease Me hooks (usually worn on the 3rd set)

34DD Victoria’s Secret push up bra hooks

So, yeah. Obviously the PL Mak is the most pulled, as it is the smallest of the bands shown. But it’s also the only one that doesn’t ride up and move around. The 28J Tease Me stretches to 32″, far above my underbust measurement of 28.5″, but still shows signs of strain and pulling out. Even on the 34DD, the hooks I usually wore the bra on are pulled further out and show some strain (compared to the first pair of hooks which I don’t think I ever used), though obviously they show the least strain, since that band stretches to ~36″.

Basically I’m not sure that for everyone, strained hooks is a sign of a too small band. Two of these bras are definitely too LARGE in the band for me and the hooks are still pulled. Also when you look at how the back of the PL Mak fits me, I don’t think it looks too small. It has the normal amount of bubbling underneath the band, but none from the top, but the hooks strain. But I can pull it around 3″ away from my body, and it’s perfectly comfortable to me.

I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter. If your hooks strain but the bra is comfortable to you, wear it. I keep worrying that I’m wearing my band too tight, after reading about reversed letterphobia and the Bras I Hate & Love post, and I keep doubting myself. But then I remember that I have multiple bras in a 30 band that lay unused in my drawer because I can’t even leave the house without pulling the band back down to the correct level. I wish I could wear a 30 though! So many more options!

The other “other stuff” that I’ll go ahead and mention again, in case you don’t follow me on Facebook, is that I’ve made a couple purchases relevant to the blog! I bought the Small Red dress from Urkye in a 36oo/ooo and the Carmen bra and Carmen stringi from Comexim in a 65L and a size large. I’m in between sizes at Urkye, and in hindsight feel like I should’ve gone for the 38oo/ooo for the extra boob room (my bust measurement is too large for any of the size 36 clothes), but whatever. I’ll just wear shapewear and hope for the best on the boobs, since it’s made from stretchy fabric. The Comexim bra is going to be an iffy fit, because I bought it in what’s essentially a 30HH. I hear the bands run tight sometimes, and would rather have a slightly too large band than an unwearable one, so I went up a band size. Nowadays I think I’m a 28JJ (I think?!?!?!), and therefore would’ve needed a 30J, but the Carmen doesn’t come in a larger cup size, and it’s sooooo sexy… I couldn’t pass it up! And honestly, all my bras aside from the Mak are too big in the band and too small in the cup, and that doesn’t stop me from wearing them, and that won’t stop me from wearing Carmen assuming all else looks good.

Red Dress from urkye.pl!

Carmen set from comexim.pl

Hopefully you guys don’t mind my hodge-podge post! Haha I just had a little to say about a lot of things. Also, how would you guys feel if I branched the blog out to other things (makeup, shoes, non-busty-specific clothing, general woman-with-curves things, delicious recipes?). I don’t really have enough money to do bra reviews very often, and now that I’m kind of buying exclusively from Poland, there isn’t much selection for me either. Let me know what y’all think!

Some Thoughts On Reversed Letterphobia and Wide Wires

I’m sure many of you have read this blog post before, since it’s been around for a while. This is something that I’ve been thinking of for the past few days, prompted by me ordering a new Ewa Michalak PL bra in a 28K. I try not to have letterphobia, and just buy what fits, and according to my experience with the PL Lilia, a 28K should either fit, or be slightly too large. Either way it shouldn’t be far off the mark. But every time I go up a cup size, I worry, am I falling victim to reversed letterphobia?

In case you were too lazy to click the link above to the fantastic blog post by Drueber und Drunter, reversed letterphobia is when women, frightened of wearing too large a band and not getting proper support, begin to wear bands that are too tight with cups that are too large.

This phenomenon was first pointed out to me by a comment on my early review for the Curvy Kate Emily. The woman pointed out that the wires were being bent too far back and being distorted, which was causing my problems with the shape in the front. I’d noticed this before too, as I’d tried on a 30H Romance in Breakout Bras whose cup shape I was much happier with, but the band was much too large. Even on the tightest hook, it rode up in the back and had to be adjusted after just a few minutes.

So today what I’m thinking about is this: How many women wearing small bands are actually falling victim to reversed letterphobia, and how many are just suffering from bras with wide wires? Are there women out there who are having problems with cup distortion even in brands with narrow wires? Because I have never seen such a case!

Writing out this short post while constantly adjusting the band on this 30H bra has calmed my mind, at least when it comes to wondering if I’m falling victim to reversed letterphobia.

But now I really have to wonder, how many women wear a 28 or 30 band and fit well into the wires of, say, the Panache Tango II balconette bra?  From Bratabase, a 30JJ Tango II has wires that are 8.5″ wide, and a band that stretches to 30″. This means that, if these wires fit well, the root of this woman’s breasts take up over half of her torso, assuming she measures 30″ around. I know that there are women who need wide wires, but how many? I feel like I see almost all women struggling to find narrower wires! Women love Ewa Michalak for this reason! Looking at the reviews for this bra on Bratabase, the only time people complained about the wires on the Tango II being too narrow was when the cup was too small all around.

I guess what I’m trying to say, in this long winded post, is why is it that wide wires are the norm, and not the exception? I know that it’s hard to find wires narrow enough, but do any of my readers struggle with finding wires that are wide enough for their shape?

Oh, and one more thing, that I’ll probably address more in a future post, but this is where using the same underwire for sister sizes doesn’t make sense to me. Why in the world would a 28J woman need the same width of wires as a 40F woman? Can anyone enlighten me? Am I just filled with bra naivety?

Some confusion about sister sizes

Since I’m getting a fair amount of traffic the past couple days (thank you Reddit for not getting angry at me for posting my own blog, and thank you By Baby’s Rules for linking here on Facebook!), I thought it would be a good time to ask a question that my math/engineering type brain has been struggling with lately:

Why do sister sizes work?

For a while, I was still wearing 30 bands, and while trying on those sizes, I found that a 30H fit me best, but that the band was too big. So I ordered the sister size, 28HH, and when I got it, it was too small in the cup. I was complaining about this to my sister when she pointed out that really, mathematically, sister sizing doesn’t really make sense.

It’s basic bra knowledge, if you go down a band size, go up a cup size to make up for it. But wait… Does that really make logical sense? I know that manufacturers use that chart with all the wire widths and the wires used to make a 30H really ARE the same wires used to make a 28HH… but does this make sense?

from biggerbras.com.

For example, lets say that you have a woman with a 29 inch underbust and a 40 inch bust. She decides she feels most comfortable in a 30 band, which would put her in a 30GG (once she calculated her cup size from 40 – 30 = 10).

But, let’s say our 29 inch underbust decides she’d rather use a 28 band size from the start! So now, her cup size is 40 – 28 = 12, and her cup size is HH… so now she has a 30GG or a 28HH to choose from, based on measurements? But what about the whole sister sizes thing?

I understand that bra sizing is an art, not a science, and that many things can affect the way your bra fits etc. etc. but I’m just trying to talk straight math here. A woman who wears a 28H has a bust that’s a full inch smaller than a woman who wears a 30GG, so why are they sister sizes?

Basically, once you find a cup that fits, shouldn’t the corresponding cup size actually be down a band and up two cup sizes? Can someone enlighten me please? Does anyone else find that they fit best in sizes that aren’t technically sister sizes (such as me, with a 30H and a 28J, but 28HH is usually a tad small)?