Warning: If you don’t want to read about old ladies’ underwear, nothing to see here, move along.  🙂

I have often wondered what the people who design ladies’ garments ingest before they sit down at their drawing board (or whatever it is they use). They clearly figure that once your butt gets wider your arms get longer (I once got a women’s XL jacket that had arms too long for my 6’7″ son).  And they also clearly figure that your butt and your boobs expand at equal rates. Thus every “plus size” lady is presumed to be built like Mae West or Anna Nicole Smith. We all need

us some over the shoulder boulder holders, right?

Wrong.  I’ve got a fat butt and a flat chest. And shopping for bras is something I undertake only when I’ve got the patience to plow through box after box that’s the wrong size, and try on bras that are ostensibly the right size but would require me to bring along two halves of a soccer ball to fill out the allegedly B cups.

I have been known to baffle even the most helpful salesladies beyond recovery. I tell them I don’t want underwires, I don’t want padding, I don’t want any kind of weird colors and please lay off the lace. Just a few plain old bras in beige (preferably) or white. I offer to buy every one they can find that actually fits me. I have never been able to buy more than two. Usually it’s “I’m sorry, we don’t carry anything like that.” (Try asking for my size at Victoria’s Secret and watch the saleslady slink away.)

Yes, I know there are bra fitters and specialty stores.  I tried a bra fitter at one of the major department stores and she was able to figure out my size in no time… but couldn’t find anything in the whole department that WAS that size. The plus-size-clothing stores are all about the underwires for the ladies who are built. They are not about the plain old bras for the ladies who are Twiggy plus a hundred pounds.

There are catalogs that sell “lingerie” for plus sized ladies, but anyone my size is outright crazy to order something she can’t try on, because she’s going to have to pay to send it back. So I have to resign myself to slogging through store after store trying to find something that doesn’t look like it should come with a stripper pole or arrive in a package with “training bra” on the outside.

Why am I ranting about this today? Because I went on yet another unsuccessful bra hunt (you probably guessed). The stores are well stocked with glossy double D’s containing industrial strength underwires. There are bras in every color and fake animal skin print you can imagine. There are bras with extra hooks and “extra support.” There are plenty of bras for women who barely have anything to put in one–but not for people who have extra to put in every other item of clothing (like me). Last time I went shopping it took me nearly three days to find three sad looking bras that were one step up from the training bra, and those are finally wearing out.

I’m just glad I have more patience for this nonsense now that I’m older. Of course if I didn’t have patience, I would have to bounce around braless, and believe me, NOBODY wants that.

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