Bra sizes are the absolute Kevin McAllister of our wardrobes. Just like Macauley Culkin’s character in Home Alone 1 through to 5, our cups, A, through to L, are so often left behind, to calamitous effect.
When was the last time you had a blow-dry? Ok, then, a haircut? Your nails done? A bikini wax? I asked a group of friends about how regularly they maintain various parts of their bodies, and while one piped up to extol the wonders of an earwax removal, only two out of eight of us considered a bra fitting as something to do regularly. The consensus was, we all sort-of know our size already, don’t we? As if boobs were like feet - not how they look in the movies, and rarely changing size.
The common advice we hear from companies who, admittedly, make a lot of money from selling underwear, is to get our bra size measured annually. But ardent non-followers of this tenet, as well as me and my friends, include Rita Ora, who recently uploaded a bikini selfie to Instagram. In the photo, the bra part of her outfit barely covers her boobs, and she knows it. The caption reads: ‘I think I need to figure out my bra size 😂’.
If Rita Ora has no idea of her bra size, I doubt I’m going to be able to work it out, no matter how helpful the speculation on on CelebrityInside.com (34B), CompareCeleb.com(32B) and, um, ActressBraSize.com (32C) might seem. What I will say, though, is that getting re-fitted for a bra has done wonders for me and if you’ve been putting it off, don’t.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, the last time I got fitted for a bra was about a decade ago, when I wanted something to go under my neon American Apparel hoodies, to keep me supported as I danced to Black Eyed Peas’ I Got A Feeling. A lot has changed since 2009, including my body, but my bra size, pretty much, has stuck.
Lazy, apprehensive that a bra fitting involved showing a stranger my tits (it doesn’t, you keep your current bra on) and not putting my body first, I guessed my bra size myself every now and then, using online guides to help me out. The result was at least five years of backache, bras digging into my sides and creeping up my back. I convinced myself, in a sort of feminist self-own, that all these painful, annoying side effects, were just part of the tyranny of bras. Bras, designed by The Man, were meant to be horrible to wear. The more agony you withstood during the day, the sweeter they felt to remove, right?
Wrong. Half an hour in a cubicle at M&S, trying on a bunch of different bras, under the guidance of a sensitive, yet hands-off bra fitter, I went from a 34B to a 34DD. I don’t say this to boast - the legend of the double dee is for another article - I say it to point out just how wrong I’d got it. No wonder my bra was hurting me.
Now I wear bras so big and so comfortable that if I started scrawling on them all their benefits, even in tiny handwriting, I’d run out of space. In short: my posture has improved, I feel more confident in my clothes and I no longer experience daily pain because of my bra.
‘82% of ladies we have fitted are in the wrong size,’ Julia Mercer, an M&S technical manager and bra fit expert, tells Grazia: ‘The most common thing that ladies get wrong is the underband [the circumference of your ribcage, under your boobs], which is normally too large. The second most common mistake is a cup too small.’ So a woman convinced she’s a 34B might actually be a 32C.
It’s all very well hearing from companies keen to sell us bras that a bra fitting can change our lives, but what about a medical expert? After all, this isn’t just a clothing issue, this is a body issue. Abi Henderson, a professional adviser with the Chartered Society of Physiotheraphy, explains to Grazia: ‘Wearing an unsupportive bra can cause problems such as back pain, it affects your posture, it can make you slump over much more, it can give you neck and shoulder pain and also it gives you premature breast sagging.’
The worst part of this, Henderson says, is the posture bit: ‘It leads to mechanical problems with function you’re getting pain from structures stressed by slouching or slumping.’
Translation: pain, in your bones and muscles, that are having to work overtime in places they’re not meant to work overtime. Bad posture has also been linked to tiredness, bad moods and poor digestion. Of course our modern world brings us plenty of other opportunities to develop bad posture - hunching over a phone has been linked to issues with our lungs - but that’s all the more reason to get this one aspect right.
‘When you’re trying on a bra,’ Henderson explains, ‘You should try them on for five minutes to assess the comfort and fit. You need to put your arms up and down and have a little jump to see if your bra and breasts stay in place. If there is spillage you’ll need to reassess.
You then need to put your top back on and see if the bra is holding you well. If your bra fits well, it should be snug under your breast, but not tight. The hooks are there for a reason!
‘Also make sure that when you position your breasts you are manually putting them there, you’re not dragging your top over your breasts. The centrepiece of your underwire should sit flat against your chest and the rest of your wire should rest against your body, there shouldn’t be any gaps. If you’re in any doubt go to a professional fitter and they’ll be able to assess.'
How often should we do this? Henderson agrees with the one-year rule, adding ‘Things like pregnancy will change your shape and size, as will weight fluctuations.’
As for sports bras, ‘If you’re a smaller size, use compression bras to press the breast against the chest wall and minimise that bounce. If you’re bigger, use encapsulation bras and they’ll support each breast within a cup.’
This might all sound like tits to you, but I’m concerned that as department stores’ fortunes sag as prematurely as my boobs did in that ill-fitting bra, bra-fitters are going to become a thing of the past. The result will be more women in ill-fitting bras, with aches and pains and all the other side effects that simply don’t need to exist.
We can, and do, buy lingerie online all we like. Some etailers, such as Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty, come with a pretty user-friendly bra-fitting chart. And M&S provides an online size guide for the 23% of women they say will never use a face-to-face measuring service. But, to me, nothing beats having a range of bras to try, and a kind, patient, trained bra-fitter guiding you, personally, through different sizes, asking what feels good, if you feel supported and comfortable. That’s something you can’t get online. Which ever way you’d like to get measured, though, if you’re serious about your health, wellbeing and comfort, we simply can’t afford to leave bra size in the shade anymore.