Day 76: I Cannot Keep It In Any Longer

Y'all, I gotta talk about bras.

Okay, look, mostly I don't wear real bras anymore.  I wear these 1/2 sports bra, 1/2 lined cami little doo-hickies that provide a moderate amount of support for daily activities and keep me from poking someone's eye out when the weather turns cold.  Most days these are all I really need out of a boob sling, and that's just fine.

You don't need undergarments when you wear pajamas.

One of life's many blessings.

HOWEVER...
I have actually promised our costume coordinator that I will continue to wear the appropriate undergarments on stage.  You might scoff and think this does not matter.

Trust me.  It matters.

Dancing.  It makes support matter.

So, anyway, I need a bra.  A real bra.  Something with hooks and cups and less elastic than not.  And you'd think this wouldn't be a big deal.  After all, I do still own some from days of yore.  Can't I just wear one of those?


APPARENTLY I CANNOT.

Why not?


I'm glad you asked.

I, like many women, have the joy of what is basically an eternally changing body.  It's not that the fundamentals change--my bones are pretty much what they are, barring breakage, and my ROUGH outline is mostly the same from year to year.  But within that outline, there's a lot of... shifting.

Some of this is due to the natural process of bearing children.  I swelled up, shrunk a bit, swelled even more, then shrunk again.  That's all very well and good. But some of it, as far as I can tell, is because there are gremlins living beneath my skin that shift fatty tissues in the night. 

Yesterday your pants fit but your bra was too small?  No worries, in a few days your bra will be perfect and your pants will give you muffin top!

 I went searching for an image that captured what I was talking about, but got side tracked by this one.  Really?  Really?  Are EITHER of these women complaining about their bodies?  If this is them when they're bloated, what do they NORMALLY look like?

Sorry.  I digress.

Anyway, bloating is just a fact of life, and I'm not really here to complain about it.  I'm REALLY here to complain about bras.

Because they are evil.

And they are expensive.

I say this without hyperbole: the most expensive items of clothing that I own are bras.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Not evening gowns, not coats, not the custom corset I made myself... Nope.  Bras.

IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE, DEMORALIZING, HIGHWAY ROBBERY TO HAVE TO GO BRA SHOPPING.

And yet, here we are.

There should be a therapeutic hotline for this kind of thing.