How to get a bra that fits right

by Jen (January 28, 2008)

It’s estimated that over 80% of women don’t wear the right size bra. I recently discovered firsthand that it actually changes your life a tiny little bit to go from an ill-fitting bra to one that’s just right. And I don’t just mean how you look. It instantly improved my posture, made tops I hadn’t been able to wear for a while fit again, and enabled me to move and walk and run without thinking about my breasts at all. That’s what a bra is supposed to do.

The best way to get a bra that fits is to get a good fitting at a department store. This involves finding an employee who’s trained in bra-fitting. Mine did the measurements and told me what they said, but then used her own experience to guess that my real size would be closer to something else. Sure enough, she was right.

I was simply a cup size larger than I used to be (or else they’ve changed the sizing, as rumor has it). But you can also be way off on the band size, and that will create discomfort and sagging. Sometimes you need to go up a cup size and down a band size. And every brand and style, and even two identical bras, can differ, so you don’t have just one bra size: as with every other piece of clothing, slightly different sizes will fit you better in various brands.

Here’s how to tell your fitting is working (or to do your own if you can’t find a fitter, or are shy about letting someone see you change bras). The right-fitting bra will:

• Make you want to stand up straight, shoulders back.
• Take the weight of your breasts off your shoulders and back - you should feel like they aren’t even there.
• Streamline bulges near your shoulder and around your back (backrolls). No, this is nothing to do with being fat and losing weight won’t fix it. Bras can create bulges and rolls on anyone. The right size bra will minimize this effect.
• Keep your breasts front and center - if they’re at all spilling over toward your arms, that means they’re being squished into the wrong position, and that’s not right.
• Give you a breast lift. I am not joking. My ill-fitting bras were causing minor sagging that I attributed to age. Now with the new ones, even when I take them off for the night, my breasts are back to where they were years ago.

Of course there’s more than size to it. Some brands and styles will fit you better than others, and you just have to try a few to see what works best.

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