Photo by Dave Allen

“Right now, I have four to six bras, but I mainly wear my favorite everyday bras. Oh, those are ugly."

I first started to notice breasts when I was ten years old. Not my own, because I didn’t have any yet, but my mother’s. I had seen my mother dressing often enough; she was small-framed, and her pear-shaped breasts were average in size and proportionate to the rest of her.

“Right now, I have four to six bras, but I mainly wear my favorite everyday bras. Oh, those are ugly."

Photo by Dave Allen

But even if they were not big, they seemed to me very real and salient: there’s a breast. It was hard to imagine my flat front being sculpted into such fullness.

For the first part of that year, Mom’s breasts were what a breast was, the very form of breasts. That changed when our family traveled to Virginia to visit Mom’s sister Nancy and her three teenage daughters. Aunt Nancy was divorced; the house was occupied entirely by women, women who were either full-blown or budding feminists. Everybody was eager to be rid of feminine self-consciousness when it came to the body, so nobody was shy about nudity. I saw all the girls naked at one time or another.

Bink Cook: "You should be able to get two fingers underneath the band in back, or else the band is too tight."

Photo by Dave Allen

The girls, none of them younger than 16, had real women’s bodies: average to tall in height, with curving hips and full, pendulous breasts. The breasts were similar to my mother’s in shape, but they had a youth and bouncy vigor that my mother’s lacked. Still, they all shared a certain heft and hang.

Breasts seem to have changed over the 20 years since my girlhood. I know that my childhood idea of breasts was hardly comprehensive; it was limited in even the most basic variable, size. I wouldn’t have known what to make of the memorable titles given to cup sizes by 1940s brassiere designer Ruth Kapinas: nubbins, snubbins, droopers, and super-droopers. But it seems that gravity has lessened over those two decades, freeing breasts, even large ones, to float undisturbed as a woman walks along.

Karen: "I’m over 40 and I nursed both my kids, so they’re not like they used to be.”

The defeat of gravity may be due to locale — I live in San Diego now, which, unlike the Midwest of my childhood, attracts a great number of the “beautiful people.” Surgery, for the sake of both enhancement and lift, has surged in popularity. But I suspect the biggest boost has come from the brassiere industry’s perfection of its latest, most wondrous technological achievement, the push-up bra. By the middle of the ’90s, a proper war of push-up specials was escalating. Besides the Wonderbra by Sara Lee, there was the Miracle Bra by Intimate Brands (which owns the Victoria’s Secret lingerie label), the Ultra Super-Boost by Gossard, and the X-Bra by Vanity Fair, all of which raised the bosom to new heights.

A prototype push-up “breast supporter” was patented in 1863 by one Marie Tuck, but her idea was judged too innovative for commercial success in the years leading up to the 20th Century. Now, nearly 150 years later, nothing seems too innovative for commercial success. Not long ago, I stopped into Victoria’s Secret at the Fashion Valley mall and had my eyes opened. Cleavage enhancement seemed the primary reason for wearing a brassiere, and a wide range of elements had been enlisted in the cause. I found “padding” made from air, water, gel, and fabric woven into silicone.

Candy, an employee, explained some of the different styles. “Some bras push you in, and some push you up. Our new line, the Very Sexy, comes with the interwoven silicone pad. On the Very Sexy Lace Miracle Bra, the pad is in the bottom, so it pushes up and gives an upward-cleavage look.” So it makes you look like you have more than you really do? “Yes, because the pad is in there. It takes you and pushes you up and fills in the lower area.” Another employee chimed in, “You wear that if you want to show more of your breasts, like with the sort of dresses they wore in medieval days.” Candy continued. “The Very Sexy Seamless Bra has a deep-V plunge. The pad is on the side; it pushes up and in and creates inner cleavage.”

Well and good, but this was just high-tech stuffing. What had me really curious was the water bra. I had heard it mentioned in faux-shocked whispers by women I knew, but no one owned one — or at least, no one admitted to it. Water wasn’t quite breast tissue, but surely it had more quiver and bounce than silicone. Did it move like the real thing? “Kind of. If you were to squish it, it would feel like you. There’s a pouch inside the bra filled with mineral oil. It’s a regular demi-style bra, so it pushes up more than in.”

The other employee, a slender young Asian named Jenna, weighed in. “Some women have complained that they’re too heavy to wear and that there are leakage problems. The bras aren’t supposed to break, but when they do, you can’t really wear them anymore. The silicone-weave bra is a lot lighter.

“Our number-one selling bra is from the Body by Victoria line; we carry nine different styles. It’s lightly lined with a molded cup, and it’s very comfortable.” In its smallest sizes, “It’s good for a training bra — it has the little molded-cup look, but it’s natural feeling. My mom bought me Jockey for Her and Fruit of the Loom for Girls. I didn’t even know what Victoria’s Secret was until I was, like, a sophomore in college. You have little girls in here who are 11 or 12, and their moms are buying them bras, and I’m, like, ‘Hello? You’re so lucky!’ ”

I bumped into some of those lucky girls outside the store and asked them to reveal their bra preferences. Fourteen-year-old Debra didn’t know her size, but she did own “probably 20 bras. I just ask the sales lady for help, and she picks a bunch for me. I don’t want flashy colors or lacy texture. If it’s kind of lacy and you want to wear a white shirt, that won’t work because it would show through. I don’t like front closures because they kind of pinch or ride up a little. The most I’ve paid for a bra was $50 at Nordstrom.”

Desiree, also 14, thought she was a 34A; she topped out at $20. “I don’t like a hard cup. Most bras my size have a soft cup, and I like a flexible cup. I probably own 20 bras in black or white. I don’t go for pink or orange, because you can’t wear them with white shirts.”

Leah was a year younger than Desiree, but she exceeded her in cup (34B), number of bras (30), and expense (average price of $30 at either Victoria’s Secret or Nordstrom). “A bra has to be comfortable and it has to fit well. I hate it when they’re loose — your size, but still loose. My favorite is an underwire that’s soft and silky, and my least favorite is a lacy one that itches so bad. I guess I have so many bras because I have a dog that chews up my underwires. Mom and I always have to go shopping for them.”

Down by the food court, I happened upon 18-year-old Kim, a 32A whose memories of bras and moms were not so rosy. “My mom pretty much forced me to wear a bra in seventh grade. I didn’t really need one; it was the whole ‘being a lady’ thing, and I absolutely hated it. I would try to sneak out of the house without one, and she would make me put one on. I actually cried because she made me put one on. Now I walk around the mall and I kind of try not to touch them. I don’t really know what to look for because my mom would just get them for me, and now it’s, like, ‘My gosh, they cost $28 each!’ I own about ten, but they never fit. Victoria’s Secret never has 32A. My favorite bra is pink with white little thin straps. Thick straps are annoying; they tend to fall, and you can’t wear a tank top with them.”

Neither 14-year-old Carla nor 23-year-old Jane (both 34Bs) minded wide straps, but they differed on water bras. “I don’t like them,” said Carla. “They feel weird and they don’t look real.” “I’m wearing one now,” said Jane. “They’re the best. You can’t feel it; it feels real and it’s not heavy.” Jane’s friend, 22-year-old Shelly, thought they were both wrong. “Bras are a pain in the ass, and they’re expensive. When I get home, I take it off. I don’t wear one if I’m not going out. I have one tube top that’s my love; it has one of those built-in shelf bras. If I can get away with it, I’ll wear that to work, but if I’m home, I’ll go all day without a bra. Though I probably should wear a bra because my boobs are going to start getting saggy.”

Jane disagreed. “I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s a myth.”

Shelly’s eyes went wide. “Is it?”

“Well, maybe if they’re really big. I mean, my roommate has humongous boobs — she has to wear a bra. She got a really expensive bra from Victoria’s Secret, and it saved her back. Her boobs were, like, five inches off her waist because she’s a size zero and she’s 4´11˝. Her boobs were so big that they made her look big around the waist. The bra lifted them up and showed off her tiny waist.”

As I glided down the escalator and strolled out into the mall’s parking lot, I wondered about 13-year-old Leah and her 30 $30 bras. Nine hundred smackers spent on brassieres floored me, but it shouldn’t have. The kids have been slaves to fashion and suckers for advertising since way back. I was reminded of this while perusing Uplift: The Bra in America, a scholarly, yet readable tome by Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau. The authors noted, “So potent was the adolescent market that the term ‘teens’ appeared in trade and consumer advertising as early as the 1930s.” (That was a mere 13 years after brassieres made it over the hump from being a “fashion minority” to being a mainstay in American women’s wear — a journey made possible by innovations in design and production and the attendant reduction in pricing.) Besides their (parents’) dollars, the teens — “young things who wore up-to-date bandeaux to go with their wispy garments” — also gave the industry its current terminology, truncating the more formal “brassiere” to “bra.” By 1934, a Harper’s Bazaar survey declared “bra” to be “the going expression.”

Most of the girls I spoke with seemed comfortable with their bras and even with their bodies. But something in me — perhaps some aspect of my own womanhood — picked up a faint hum of tension, and my curiosity was piqued. Bras, after all, are bound up with what they bind, intimately connected to the glands that give them their reason for being — breasts.

Bras had brought me their share of anxieties and joys — or at least, there were anxieties and joys over my breasts that I had projected onto my bras. If I wore an ill-fitting bra, one that had me tugging and adjusting all day long, I found myself resenting both bra and breasts. My bra had me feeling like my breasts were problematic. I wanted to take it off, but I couldn’t — it wouldn’t be proper, I would feel self-conscious, my nipples would show. But when my breasts were wrapped in a black lacy number, there was no question that I felt more desirable. Breasts and bras were all entangled for me, and I wondered what other women had to get off their chests.

Micky, a 49-year-old speech pathologist, wears a 36B. Her linguistic studies affirmed what she already knew about the relation between breasts and American culture. “The Japanese have about 50 words for ‘penis.’ In our society, we have I don’t know how many names for breasts. Boobs, jugs, hooters, tits, a good set… Boobs are very important in our society.” And so, by extension, are the houses we provide for them.

“I got my first bra, a Maidenform, back in 1965, when I was in seventh grade. I was 5´5˝; a hundred pounds; a tall, skinny track star. For me, it was the transition period from being a tomboy into being a girl — the braids were cut. I had my first short haircut. I remember that it was so embarrassing to go into the store. I couldn’t fill an A cup. I think I was a double-A, maybe a toss-up between that and a triple-A. I had the flattest chest on the spectrum. I was devastated; it was my first realization of just how flat I was.”

The letters indicating bra size confronted her in ways that more personal comparisons did not. “My best friend, Mary Ann, was endowed. They bounced, but we never talked about it. I just knew that my friend bounced and mine didn’t flinch. I wanted boobs. I had a training bra that wasn’t training anything. So I stuffed. I thought I had come up with something totally unique, because you didn’t talk about it or read about it.”

Not to say that it couldn’t be read about; just not in the sort of books Micky frequented. A limerick from Uplift resonates with Micky’s dilemma:

There was a young lady of Skye
With a shape like a capital I;
She said, “It’s too bad!
But then, I can pad.”
Which shows you that figures can lie.

Some training bras, says Micky, “were stretchy. You couldn’t stuff those; it would look unnatural. So I went up a step to a 32A. It had a formed cup, and I stuffed it with tissue — not too much, just enough to fill it out. Sometimes I would save the tissues and put them in my underwear drawer. But then, there was always the fear of my mother going into the drawer and finding them — she wouldn’t buy me a padded bra.”

Micky’s tissues did the trick for her, but for others whose mothers were perhaps not so opposed to enhancement, the options were plentiful. From Uplift: “Various methods of faking an ample bosom had been employed from time immemorial, but the 1950s offered more innovative ploys.” Foam rubber, built into the cup or in the form of insertable pads was the most popular option. But eiderdown was also used, and one bra, the Très Secrète, was actually inflatable. A plastic straw was used to blow the cup up to the desired size. (“In the late ’60s,” notes the book, “a new material for padding, polyester fiberfill, was introduced.” It lacked foam rubber’s tendency to “become dry, hard and powdery from repeated washings.”)

Had Micky been allowed to purchase one of these bras, she might have been spared the most embarrassing moment of her girlhood. “I was running track. There were three white girls, and all the rest were beautifully developed black girls. Back in those days, you dressed down for track, and all the girls were very modest. We didn’t run around the locker room bare naked; we stood locker to locker. I was stuffing my bra every day with toilet paper, and I was very careful every day to get very carefully into that little locker” so as not to be spotted. “Everyone was very careful about their privacy under their towels. One day, someone swatted me with a towel from behind, and my towel fell off. I looked down and there were two perfectly formed cone titty tissues at my feet. The roar of the waves of laughter through the whole locker room was all I could hear. Before I was finished getting dressed and turning red, it was like the wave had gone through the whole school. Everyone knew Micky stuffed. I knew I was dead. I mean, there couldn’t be anything worse than stuffing your bra.”

The embarrassment, of course, faded with time. “I just learned to work through it. I kept wearing my bras and thinking, ‘I’m going to develop any day now.’ ” But her athletic endeavors apparently staved off that development until her mid-20s. Then, when she had children, development came with a vengeance. “I had my first pregnancy at 28. I was probably a 34B before I got pregnant. I actually went up to a 44DD when I was breast-feeding, I had so much milk. They were huge. I never knew we had more than one hole — what a realization, the first time your milk lets down and you’ve got multiple spigots. Did anyone ever tell you that you had more than one hole? I wore nursing bras and pads in the beginning. But after three months, I knew when my milk was coming, and I didn’t need the pads. I knew how to regulate myself.”

After bearing and nursing two children, Micky ended up a size 36D — “floppy, floppy.” When the children had grown up, she got a “breast lift. You bet I’m still stuffing, just using chemistry and science.”

Now she buys bras “twice a year. I don’t have little children anymore, so I can afford them. For my work — because I do lifting of patients — I need support bras without wires. That’s hard to find; I had to go to Playtex or Maidenform types of bras. And you really have to hunt for bras that don’t have wires. But the Playtex bra is a good, sturdy bra with a thick strap and everything up front. The bra takes them and kind of puts them upward and pointy — kind of the sweater-girl look.

“During the spring, I will do a spring bra. I will go for pink, pastel yellow, and green. Then I definitely have my falls, where I go for nice brown or black or beige. I have a leopard one. And last night I bought a set that was a black bikini thong and a bra with rhinestones. I paid $80 for it; for me, that was a lot to spend. I probably have 25 bras at an average of $20 apiece. There’s big money in bras, and I get the matching undies. But I still look for sales. I went to Victoria’s Secret last night and bought two sets on sale.”

While she was there, she noticed “all these 15- and 16-year-old little girls with their mothers. They were buying the bras that have the little water bags in them. I asked one girl, ‘Why are you buying a bra with enhancement?’ She looked great; she probably had 34Bs or Cs. She said, ‘Everybody wears them. They give you lift and make them come out of your clothes.’ I thought, ‘My God, we’re still stuffing, 35 years later. Some things just have not changed.’ ”

Some women “stuff” not because of what nature has failed to give, but because of what has been taken away. Bink Cook, owner of the Brighter Side: A Boutique for Women with Cancer, told me about mastectomy bras and prosthetics, beginning with the fitting. “Any woman, whether she’s had cancer or not, can benefit from a good bra-fitting from somebody who knows what they’re doing. You start the fitting — ideally — with the bra on. You measure with a tape measure underneath the bra line all the way around, and you add five inches to that. That’s the band size. If a woman has had one breast removed, you measure under the remaining breast from the sternum to the center of the spine, double that, and add five inches.

“For the cup size, you measure across the apex of the breasts all around — or, for one breast, from the center of the sternum to the center of the spine over the apex of the remaining breast, and double it. Then you take the two measurements and compare them. You subtract the smaller from the larger; generally the cup size is larger. You use the difference to determine whether you will be an A, B, C, or D cup.”

Cook handed me a sheet produced by the Camp company with numeric examples. (According to Uplift, the company was started in 1908, specialized in maternity and postoperative brassieres, and “pioneered the relating of the size and pendulousness of breasts to the letters of the alphabet A through D” in the early ’30s. Before that, manufacturers relied on stretchable cups to accommodate differently sized breasts. Many companies adopted the ABCD system, but the big catalogs continued to use the terms “small, medium, large, and stout” through the ’40s.) If a woman measured 31 inches under the line of her brassiere, then her band size would be 31+5=36. Then, if she measured 37 inches around from the apex of her breasts, you would subtract 36 from 37 and get 1 inch. That 1 inch would mean a cup size of A. A difference of two inches would mean a B cup; three, C; four, D; five, DD; six, DDD; and seven, F.

“That’s a guideline,” noted Cook. “Not every woman will fit it that way. If a woman has all kinds of breast tissue hanging out over the cup, it’s not a good fit — the cup is too small. And you should be able to get two fingers underneath the band in back, or else the band is too tight. If the bra is pulling to one side or the other, something is too small, or even sometimes too large. If there is extra fabric in the cup, obviously it’s too large.

“With someone who has had a mastectomy, you fit the natural side first and find a good fit. Finding a prosthesis that fits and fills out the cup is usually the easier part. We feel that all the prostheses that restore balance and have good cosmetic features are made from silicone. The very old prostheses were made from clear, heavy, balloonlike material, and there was a straw that inflated it. When women would fly in airplanes, their prostheses would deflate” due to the change in air pressure.

“All the bras that we carry have pockets on both sides, which are made from different fabrics.” She showed me a delicately detailed lace bra. “It’s a pretty bra; they’re much less industrial than they used to be. They used to be made of nylon and more heavy-duty fabrics and have heavy, wide straps. The surgeries that they used to do were more invasive — they removed tissue all the way down to the bone and way up the chest walls. We still have women who come in and need the bras that are cut high under the arms, because lymph nodes were usually removed.”

Cook stressed the importance of wearing a prosthesis to avoid back and neck pain, as well as potential curvature of the spine. The cosmetic reasons seemed obvious, but she added, “You want weight for balance and to hold the bra in place. If you just wear cotton-fiber filler, there’s nothing to hold it down, so you end up with one up and one down.”

Jane, a mastectomy patient, told me about her bras. “I’m so underendowed that I would wear the Victoria’s Secret Wonderbra or Olga with foam. I was, like, a 34A, but in the mastectomy bras I went down to a 34AA because they tend to be large in the pockets. The kind of bra that I wear every day is lower in the front and sides and very tailored. It has more material, so that it evens you out if you’re wearing a prosthesis, but unfortunately, it still has seams across. I have some attachable prostheses so I can wear over-the-counter bras; I just have to watch how low the front goes. Some bras go lower than the top of the prosthesis. I slip the prosthesis on before I put on the bra, and it can shift, so I have to push it up and recenter it.”

Ellen, a 40-year-old attorney, wears two prostheses, but only occasionally, and not because of what cancer took away, but because of what nature failed to provide him. “I’m a cross-dresser,” he explains, “and I am in-between being a cross-dresser and a transsexual. I feel more comfortable going both ways, having kind of a bigenderism. I really like the female part of me, and I don’t always have to dress up to experience it. But I find dressing up to be very relaxing.

“I started out wearing my mom’s bras in the ’60s, when I was 12. Then I graduated to my sister’s bras; I stuffed them with toilet paper or socks. In 1980, I started full-time cross-dressing. At first, I went to JCPenney and Sears to buy bras, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten into exclusive bras like Wacoal or Lily of France or Victoria’s Secret. I shop dressed as a woman, because it’s good to try them on. I know I’m a 36 or 38C, but depending on the bra and the way it’s cut…it’s better to try them on.”

Ellen stuck with socks at the beginning of his cross-dressing days, but, he says, “I’ve also tried birdseed breasts. It’s a drag-queen thing; you use only small, round seeds. You wrap birdseed in a nylon stocking; then you tie the stocking in a knot and that makes a nipple.” Another trick is to pour Jell-O into balloons and allow it to set. “Then, a few years back, I decided I wanted a bit more realism, so I started wearing silicone mastectomy cups. They were expensive — like, $750 — but they last forever if you take care of them. Just wash them with soap and water, keep them out of the sun, and make sure that you don’t handle them with nails.”

When it comes to deciding upon size, he says, “I think the smaller the cup, the better — the more passable you look. I’m a size 10, and a woman who is size 10 should have normal breasts. I first got the silicone cups in what amounts to a C cup — they size them funny — and I didn’t feel comfortable in that big a size. So I went down a size. They look really natural, like a real breast. They’re heavy and they bounce.”

Ellen told me about some of his bras. “I have over a dozen. I used to have white, off-white, and black, but then my tastes got more extravagant. I want underwear to be fun. When I have a bra on that is pretty, it enhances my whole self. I’ve started getting into lavender and other colors, different styles of bras. Victoria’s Secret sells a water bra, and for a guy that’s not thin, I have a lot of breast tissue, so wearing low-cut stuff is easy. I just tape them or push them up. I usually get an underwire bra. I’m pretty traditional, so I usually get bras with back closures. And I like a more full-cut bra, because it holds the breast forms better.

“Wearing a bra feels totally natural. It doesn’t bother me or dig into me. I don’t have the same experiences that genetic women do. I find it kind of liberating to wear a bra. I guess there are women who wear bras just for their utility, but to me, breasts are the height of what makes one feminine. It’s a wonderful feeling, as a heterosexual male, to remove a woman’s bra from her, because when you take a woman’s bra off, you’re releasing her femininity, and she’s sharing a very intimate part of herself with you. I think that’s a lovely thing and very much of a turn-on. I worship women. I enjoy women. My cross-dressing doesn’t detract from my heterosexuality; it adds to it. If I didn’t love women, I wouldn’t try to emulate them.”

Dee, a 65-year-old great-grandmother, never “stuffed.” Her cups began to runneth over from her first early burst of development. “I got my first bra at 11. It was a Bali bra — bow in front. It had cups for falsies — which I didn’t need — and I cut them off as soon as I got home. My mother had the lady at the department store show me how to lean into the bra. This old lady pulled my breast up and showed me how — it was so embarrassing. In a couple of months, I outgrew that bra. I had to cut it open and add ribbons to expand it so that I could get it on. I think that bra was a B cup. Mom wouldn’t get me one when I was an A, so I always walked around with my arms in front of my chest, and I wouldn’t wear sweaters. Once I got my breasts, they got so big that I went from my first bra to a D in a year. I was a 32D, and that was a hard size to find.”

Dee now wears a 42C, though she says that “if they had a C and a half, that would be perfect.” She was a young woman during the bra-burning ’60s, but she has regarded bras as functional rather than political. “They’ve always been to keep me from flopping when I run.” And maybe to help her breasts keep their shape through the years of nursing several of her seven children. “I wore a nursing bra day and night. It was because of my grandmother. I asked her when she was about 55 why her breasts were down so low. She said, ‘Because we didn’t have bras when I was young and nursing my children.’ I thought, ‘Then I’m going to wear mine day and night.’ I think it worked, because I had a better shape than a lot of high school girls when I was 45. When I was in my 40s, I had a 17-year-old boyfriend, and when I took my bra off for the first time with him, he expected my boobs to drop and they didn’t. They were still pretty high. I guess he’d seen his mother naked, and she was younger than I was. He was surprised, and I got kind of an ego boost. Of course, now they’ve totally gone south. Everything went south when the hormones departed.”

What matters in these days after the southward migration is “comfort, comfort, comfort. I don’t care if a bra gives support, as long as it keeps me from sweating. I won’t wear nylon, because it’s itchy. I don’t even wear cotton anymore, because I like the fabric to give a little bit. All my bras end up being made of Dacron. I think materials in bras have improved vastly. When I first started wearing them, you could only get cotton. The bras had four sections of cotton in the cups. We’d starch the hell out of them and iron them into outrageous Barbarella points and wear them under cashmere sweaters. That was about 1953.”

According to Uplift, it was Maidenform that introduced the “star-flower style that reshaped the breasts into rocket nose-cones. However, the torpedoes’ long reign over high fashion ended in the mid-’60s as brassieres took on rounded contours.” Further, “Just as important as cup shape were cup textures. These became seamlessly smooth to fit unobtrusively under sweaters, double-knit dresses and even T-shirts. Heat-shapeable ‘thermoplastic’ polyester and nylon, along with spandex, became the mainstays of bra-making.”

As her reminiscent chuckling over home-fashioned bullet-bras subsided, Dee got down to the nitty-gritty of her gripes with modern-day bra design. “I can’t stand underwires, because they hurt. I’m disabled. I don’t run around; I’m sitting scrunched over a lot. And sometimes, if you’re in a bra and you’re out to the last hook, they don’t give you enough fabric at the end of the backstrap, so the hook digs into you. So you have to go to the next size up and put it to the tightest hook, and then the tab wobbles all over the place. The worst bra I ever owned was called a Sideshaper by, I think, Playtex. The Sideshapers just cut into my armpits, and I had to cut them off. Finally, I just threw those bras away.

“But my biggest, biggest gripe is that soft [non-underwired] bras for big women need to have more colors and flowers. Just because we don’t want a whole lot of support doesn’t mean we don’t want a whole lot of beauty. They’re all either white, black, or beige. I am so color oriented, and it just drives me bananas that I can only have those three colors. I drew designs on a couple of the white and beige ones with Magic Markers to liven them up.

“I mean, I can get underpants in colors. I wear the old-lady ones that come up high, because the bikini ones just go ba-lump on me — my saddlebags are bigger than my hips. But Vanity Fair makes some that fit great, and they have all these pretty colors and flowers.”

Dee does most of her bra shopping at Wal-Mart and Mervyn’s. She avoids specialty stores such as Victoria’s Secret. “Most of their bras are for women who are looking for enhancement. If they have support, they’re heavily underwired. My favorite brand now is Just My Size; Playtex has some good ones. I pay between $13 and $15, because I buy them when they’re on sale.”

Like Dee, 24-year-old Helen has seen her cup size shrink — she went from a 34DD to a 34C. In her case, it was a matter of fat. “When I wore a 34DD, I was 170 pounds; now I’m 140 pounds. I wanted to be healthier, so I started dieting and exercising.” Other factors also played into her decision. “I think that in popular culture, people feel that if you’re heavier, men won’t be as interested in you. It’s believed that thinness is beautiful. So I felt that maybe I’d be more desirable if I were thinner. Since I’ve lost weight and my bust got smaller, I’ve gotten less attention from men.”

Helen didn’t mean to shrink her breasts; she enjoyed the attention from men. “I didn’t mind having them that size. I mean, they were bigger than one handful. Reaching across stuff was harder, and they were always jostling when I exercised — I had to get a really tight sports bra that would really hold them down. Now my breasts are less than a handful, and it’s easier to run, so that’s a good aspect of the shrinkage.”

Through surgery, it would have been possible for Helen to lose weight and keep her bounteous bosom, but enhancement never appealed to her. “I wouldn’t do it, because of the possibility of scarring or becoming numb. I mean, the whole point of having them is to derive pleasure from them. I wouldn’t want to risk hurting them. And I have a lot more important things to spend my money on than that.”

She prefers to focus on the positive aspects of her reduced circumstances, noting that she enjoys “shopping for bras more now because there’s more selection. The average 34 is a B cup, and I was a DD. Most DDs would be a 36 or 38 band size; a 34DD was hard to find. Before, when I’d shop, I’d go into the dressing room, put on the bra, then hop around to see how much they bounced. I wanted to see what it would be like if I were walking down the street, how much they would be jostling.”

She recalls her old 34DDs. “There were four hooks in the back; it was hardware. It was a completely functional garment.” Her current bras “are much prettier. They have thinner straps and only two hooks. When I had to wear the more severe bras, I would have to tighten the thick straps for support, and they would feel uncomfortable.” Unlike Dee, Helen says she “always did and still does wear underwire; I think that bras without underwires ride up.”

And while her bras have changed, her exterior wardrobe has not — mostly. “I don’t dress differently. I still wear the same clothes, but now I have a Wonderbra and a two-piece bathing suit with a padded top. I’m trying to maximize my chest, where before, the bras I wore were minimizers.”

Karen, a 41-year-old day-care worker, wishes she could minimize her weight a bit — she’d like to fit into her old bras. “I weigh 148 pounds now, and I wear a 36C. I’ve gained a bit of weight; I’m really a 34C. My family teases me; they say I’m a 34 long. You know gravity. I’m over 40 and I nursed both my kids, so they’re not like they used to be.”

Karen reminds me a little of myself, especially in the way her bras engage her self-image. “Right now, I have four to six bras, but I mainly wear my favorite everyday bras. Oh, those are ugly. They’re the white kind of grandma bras, very full and supportive. They’re battered — all cotton, nothing fancy, and the elastic needs to be replaced. I have fancier ones that I could fit into when I was thinner: a black sheer one, a blue velvet one, and one with lace and a bow. I’m still hoping to lose weight, because there are fashions where you can show your strap and match your bra to your outfit. Sometimes you can wear fancier bras as tops under jackets. But for everyday, I like the plain, regular, comfortable bra that you can toss in the washer with other things. The fancier bras I have to wash by hand.”

She does not wear underwires “because they gnaw into me,” and she avoids front closures. “I’d be walking around, and boing!” But comfortable or fancy, “I’ve never had a bra that fits well. They always ride up, no matter what bra I wear.”

Karen does most of her bra shopping at Mervyn’s or Sears, spending $15 to $25 for everyday, well-made bras. But when it comes time to take her daughter bra shopping, she will head to Kmart, “because my dad brought me to Kmart for my first bra.” Her daughter is only six but is already excited by the prospect. “She says, ‘I can’t wait until they grow.’ She’s interested in body growth. She walked in when I was dressing. I didn’t hide from her, and she asked if she could feel. I said, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ I remember having those thoughts with my own mom.”

Brenda, 33, is also a mother, but she is single and often struggling to make ends meet. Her breast size has proved as unstable as her life, bouncing from a 36C to a 36A and then to a 36D. That last jump was the result of surgical enhancement. “My chest size didn’t matter to me until I got with this one guy. He gave me a complex. He’d come home from the titty bars and lift up my shirt and say, ‘Where’d they go?’ I was a 36C before I was dating him, and after I had him, I worked out so much that they just disappeared. I went down to an A cup.

“Then he told me, ‘If you get your body fat percentage down to 16 percent, I’ll buy them for you.’ So I worked hard and got my body fat down to 18 percent. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t get it down to 16 percent.” The guy wouldn’t budge on the percentage, “so I decided to buy them myself, but then I went back and forth.” A night of clubbing with a girlfriend helped Brenda make up her mind. “I went out with a friend who goes to these Gothic industrial places where there are cross-dressers and homosexuals. I met a couple of her friends. One of them said, about me, ‘She’s beautiful.’ They just talk about you right in front of you! And then he said, ‘Oh, it’s a shame she’s flat-chested.’ Two days later, I was on the phone with Visa, trying to get a loan. A cross-dresser had been making fun of me — I’d had it. That broke it for me.”

Now when she shops for bras, “I try to find something that’s not like armor. Once you become a D cup, the bra covers high up. It’s hard to find a D; when I see the cutest bras, they’re always a smaller size and I’m, like, ‘What was I thinking?’ And now, because of the surgery, I can’t sleep on my stomach anymore, and I have to wear two bras at night. Otherwise, the packets in my breasts shift and move, and it hurts. The first bra holds them there, and the second one I put on is a tight sports bra. That pulls them together and holds them up. If I go with just a negligee at night and there’s no support for my breasts, they’re kind of loosened up the next day.”

She complained to her plastic surgeon, who replied that if her breasts were naturally that large, she wouldn’t be able to sleep on her stomach then either. She complained about the shape. He answered, “ ‘Well, they look natural.’ I said, ‘I didn’t really want the natural look. I wanted the centerfold look. I brought you in all those Playboys and told you that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want the National Geographic look; I wanted the Playboy look.’ Also, since the surgery, my nipples don’t go through that soft stage; they’re always hard. I wear the same blouses to work that I used to, but I’ve realized that I have to keep my jacket on all day. I need to get one of those bras with foam in it to disguise my nipples.”

But despite all her frustrations, she says, “To tell you the truth, I wish I would have gotten them a little bigger. I’m in proportion now, and I want to be more exaggerated in certain areas. I want to be bigger on top than on the bottom.” Despite the increased frustration in bra shopping? “Yeah, but maybe I’d have a bit more money to get them, you know what I mean? Your looks make or break you sometimes. I just stopped working for an online modeling agency where you show a lot of yourself. Some people consider it porn, because you’re getting naked and you’re actually doing things for the people” who are watching. “But you’re alone. I had a lot of lacy bras for that, because you need to wear something before you take it off. Those bras normally cost $45 at Frederick’s of Hollywood. I like Frederick’s better than Victoria’s Secret because Frederick’s is for a more curvy woman like me. Victoria’s Secret is more for petite women. Those Frederick’s bras look good, but if you put a shirt over it, it’s not going to hold you. It’s a show bra more than a go bra.”

Brenda still goes back and forth on the ups and downs of her new chest, including the question of how much she should show. “I had to do a bachelor party a couple of weeks ago to make enough money for rent. I figure I’ve got these and people will pay to see them, but at the same time, I don’t like to sell myself short. I just want to be a good mom, but someday I’ll be old and think, ‘I could have done this.’ So it’s used against me and it gets me places. There are pluses and minuses. The negative part is that men don’t really look you in the eye anymore.”