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.
Then there’s XXL and 2XL, which aren’t the same size for some bizarre reason
Tall sizes ftw
They’re so hard to find. I have to buy all my shirts at Eddie Bauer because 1) I’m a dad and 2) they’re one of the only stores that regularly carry them.
Some brands do slim sizes. Small shirts don’t cover my belt but mediums can be baggy on me, but medium slim fits perfectly.
At this point, my wife just naturally reaches over to pull my shirt down if i do that, like for example holding on a tram :D
That sounds like a problem a tailor could solve
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. Clothing manufacturers assume Americans scale horizontally as they scale vertically. This maybe true given our obesity crisis.
I think there was a great youtube video on clothes standardization, and how its basically not good for anyone, neither is it standard in any sense of the word
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 42 inches around at the girls. Nonsense. The way dudes THINK it works makes so much more sense.
I’m a woman w
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…
And it is more complicated even than that. I am a small busted woman and yet the best fit I can get is 34D. The 34 makes sense, underbust is 33. The D is what I measure but most have too much room. I still need that size because the circumference of the boobs fits in that wire; any smaller is too narrow.
I think bras need 3 measurements not 2. I need band 34, wire size D, cup capacity closer to C. And there are plenty of women in the opposite situation too, with more projection but smaller circumference.
So the non-standardized sizing is a workaround for that problem.
Yeah, the two measurements are really not enough to fit all the different boob shapes. And just offering different shapes with the same two measurements leads to problems for those who otherwise could rely on the two alone.
I have that problem with trousers where one measurement for width is not enough to fit both my waist and my hips. With bras it’s just that apparently you can’t have more than B or at maximum C if your underbust is 28/30. According to companies at least.
Yeah and what anyone thinks is a 32b is probably a 32E or something. Again with the wire circumference! A 32b is like a shot glass not a champagne glass. I can tell any guy I’m an A or B cup because that’s what they “look like”, and I agree.
I just started thinking of them as numbers all, no letters. So I am wearing 34+4. That’s not big, a +4 just means 4" difference underbust to bust, and some of that is lats, not boobs!
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.
Oh believe me, I fully get that I have a bit of “small boob privilege” in terms of being able to wear bralettes. Do the non-bralette, non-underwire bras still not work for you though? They seem to provide a decent amount of support, but idk how they work for everyone.
They still buckle a bit unfortunately, unless they’re a full-on sports bra that is squashing them as hard as possible and giving me the monoboob look. I’ve also found that a properly fitted bra that has the wire for structure actually makes me look slimmer overall, probably because my band size is actually on the narrower side. So I’ll occasionally wear the one non-wire bra I have when I don’t care as much about it looking good under my clothes. But even then, when it buckles on the side, the bra still kind of sticks out under my arms so it’s still uncomfortable.
Agree on all points! When I was had my first grownup job I was trying to build up my wardrobe and found a pair of jeans that fit and felt great. Size 3. I went back after another paycheck to get an identical third pair and when I got home, they were practically falling off of me. I had to exchange them for a 1, which was still larger than the size 3s from just a month or two earlier.
But a fitted bra? One of my best purchases ever. Getting in the right size resolved about 70% of my chronic back pain. Fit is different between bra types but decent brands’ sizes are standardized, regardless what OP says.
Well, today years old. Thanks.
They aren’t?
I’ve been married for 8 years, and I had no idea 😂
Never been underwear shopping with the wife? I usually take my wife once a year. Think of it this way. A good bra is like a good pair of work boots. You get a shit pair and you’re in pain every time you wear them. Bras are the same thing.
Yes and no. Sexy underwear, sure, but never a big talk around the vast differences. I told her about this comment, and I got a 10 minute talk about it 😂 no regrets!
Lol she will be impressed if you take her out for shopping for some bras that fit her. Glad to help
I’ll do that! Next time we’re in the city, I’ll make sure to plan for it 😁
I would assume they’re not but that’s because I notice that depending on who makes what shoe depends on what size I have. I also see this in pants and shorts for men as well. I just assume nothing is actually standardized due to QA never really catching things.
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!
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit
How? like, I don’t want to mansplain her, but I don’t want her desconfortable just because it’s using the wrong size
Not to point to the other site, but r/ABraThatFits is a great place to start. They have guides and stuff. It’s fascinating.
Today years old
same
Oof, yeah I was about 23 and wanted to help my now wife to get some of the correct size, which was an almost impossible ordeal. Wanna hear the story? Fine:
Taking the two measures was the easy part (and doing it again during her period, because of course the size changes during the cycle, anything else would be too easy). Then I read that the cup size is the absolute difference between bust and band measurement no matter the band measurement. Furthermore since the material is elastic, for a good support, the band should be a tad below the measurement*.
So far so good, went to the store and there are only A-D cups everywhere, E if you’re lucky. So basically no matter what exact measure they take between the cups, you’re ok if you’re thin and have small or somewhat big breasts, or you’re a bit fuller and have tiny breasts. Everyone else is automatically screwed. If you’re lucky enough to fall into those categories you then have to try on so many to sift through different positioning and forms of breasts until you find one that is comfortable. We had to order some all the way from the UK because it wasn’t possible to get anything coming near the correct size here.
*women who wore normal cloth bras before and continued wearing the same size have felt that the elastic hasn’t made things better necessarily. Can’t find the source for that one right now though.
Just now.
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.
Men’s clothing sizes are a little dumb sometimes but I can usually take a tape measure to my waist and correctly order pants. Your guess is as good as mine what the difference between “boot cut” and “relaxed fit” are, and I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager. As in, I can compare a Medium I’ve had since the Dubya administration to an XL today. But getting fitted for a suit, they measure me in inches and the clothing is more or less sized in inches.
Women’s clothing sizes have had two different ice pick lobotomies. Women come in a wider range of sizes and aspect ratios, women’s clothing is pretty much universally designed to fit tighter, but on the rack they’re given one meaningless size number. a 12 is bigger than a 10, who knows by how much, and there’s nothing on the girl you can measure with a tape to get that number, and there is no standard here at all. Why they haven’t revolted I have no idea.
I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager.
I thought that too, but it turns out I just got fat
I have size M shirts from high school that fit like an L on the rack today.
It’s been the opposite for women’s clothing in my experience. I’ve had to give up multiple brands as their shirts got too big. Same labeled size, same style, but it’s suddenly 2” wider.
There is a whole NPR episode on women sizing and history of sizing in general.
Boot cut is tighter around the hips and thighs, has a slightly flared leg (think bell bottoms but way smaller flare). Relaxed is straight leg, but not so tight as to be skinny jeans. I generally wear boot cut, but my boots are only ankle high so it’s not like I need the extra leg room. I just like the way they look on me.
Boot cut means a slightly flared leg (think a very very subtle bell bottom) so that they fit over cowboy or work boots easier.
Relaxed fit means it’s made a little bigger in the seat and thighs compared to the same size in a regular fit. The lines/silhouette aren’t as clean/nice, but it’s comfier; which is why it’s called relaxed fit.
It’s not that they’re not standardized, there’s a thing called sister sizes
Here https://www.sizechart.com/brasize/sistersize/index.html
Your actual size is the lowest sister size
Most of the bras that my girlfriend gets fits on her first try, although she does tend to prefer sister sizes over her real size. If your girlfriend is having issues with bras fitting, it might be worthwhile to read up on how bra sizes are actually calculated and do a measurement yourself. Funny enough, most girls don’t seem to know how the bra size system works either and they just get their sizes through trial and error, which seems like what has happened here.
The letter by itself is fundamentally meaningless. A 32D is equivalent to a 34B! And most girls severely underestimate their actual size. What would colloquially be called a B or C is actually an E
I don’t think you know how the bra size system works. The number is the size measured underneath the breasts. The letter is the cup size determined as a the difference between the measurements across and underneath the breasts.
Therefore no way is 32D equivalent to 34B. Or at least it shouldn’t be equivalent, but manufacturers don’t respect the standard, so the equivalence is not impossible in some cases. It’s really super inconsistent.
Also breasts can have different shapes and can be placed closer or further appart, which makes finding a fitting bra very hard for some people.
32 + 4 = 36
34 + 2 = 36
Am I missing something? Barring some extremely stupid math error, I don’t see how I’m incorrect
You’re close! Both a 34B and a 32D would have the same measurement around their bust, but the bust size alone can’t be used to determine bra size. The rule is to increase band size by 1 increment (which is 2”) and reduce cup size by 1 increment (the letter) to maintain the same volume.
The volume of a 32D is the same as a 34C.
Exactly, bust size is very nice, but it doesn’t speak about the torso shape. And shape is what determines, whether a bra fits.
Omg, just realised this must be the way manufacturers think about bras, that would explain a lot 😆
You can add numbers correctly, but why the hell would you do that?
Adding cup size to band size is a bit like buying pants and adding leg size to waist size. One measure cannot compensate for another.
A woman with band size 32 measures 32 inches around her torso underneath her breasts. That’s the number she needs, or else the bra is going to be too loose or too tight under the breasts.
A woman with small breasts and large chest cannot buy a bra with tighter band size that she wouldn’t be able to put around her chest and compensate with bigger cups. That would mean she would have to leave the bra open in the back and wear it as a strange kind of napkin with huge cups hanging loosely on her small breasts, leaving a large room above them.
The same goes for a woman with large breasts and thin chest. If she bought a bra with bigger band size and compensated with smaller cup size, it would be very loose around her chest and there would be two funny little cups resting on the top of her much larger breasts.
I’m taking it into caricature territory to make it easier to imagine, but even if the differences in size are not that big, it’s kind of what it actually feels like for a woman.
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