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!
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.
Tall sizes ftw
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.
This is the case with all clothing.
All is a strecht… But yeah once marketing took over that function, it got turned into whatever the fuck we got now in the US🤡
Today years old.
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.
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.
It is well standardized around here.
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.
Edit: This calculator and the community of the same name on the-site-that-shall-not-be-named helped me a lot in finding my actual bra size. Now my only problem is that almost no company here has more than two or three bras in that size…
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.
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.
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.
I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it’s insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.
There shouldn’t be anything preventing me from figuring out women’s bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don’t know them and they probably don’t want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.
I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements.
Men’s pants are sized based on the number of inches around the waist and the inseam. The inseam is stupid because it ignores the height from the waist to the crotch so relaxed fitting jeans will have a shorter inseam than a regular fit. I’m sure it is because it was standardized when higher waisted jeans and overalls and that kind of stuff was popular.
But it doesn’t matter any more because the waist sizes can be off by a few inches anyway. It was literal, then became kind of close. Not as bad as women’s clothing, but it is brand specific depending on how hard they lean into vanity sizing.
Yet another reason why I don’t wear pants.
I think this is filed in my head under “no two manufacturers’ sizes are the same (even if they’re supposed to be to a standard)”, and “this is especially true of women’s wear”, so while I may have known about bra cup sizes specifically at some point in the past, I’m not sure I did at the time I arrived at this post, and yet am thoroughly unsurprised to (re)discover it.
Probably around 14 or something. For whatever reason, people will often name DD as a large bra size around here. It also doesn’t exist in our bra size system. Some girl pointed out that non-sense at school.
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.
There are plenty of brands that follow mostly standard sizing, as I understand it. But popular brands in the US (like Victoria Secret) generally don’t.
I fell down the r/abrathatfits rabbit hole one day, years ago. It’s fascinating.
I once talked to my girlfriend about bra sizes and how much i don’t understand them. Then we both googled bra sizes and how often women wear the wrong size and fit and all. It’s a whole science behind it and it’s quite interesting. Now, 10 years later i still often think: oh no, she wears a bra that doesn’t fit right and probably doesn’t even know it.
Yup! “Oh, she should probably go down a band size and up a cup size” popped into my head one day and I laughed at the absurdity.
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit, because she’d never known any of it. No one taught her. Made me feel vaguely guilty of mansplaining, but it helped!
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.
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
