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!

  • dariusj18@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    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.

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      5 hours ago

      Not much help to know what cup size you are if the bra companies are only pretending to be standardized

      • ValiantDust@feddit.org
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        5 hours ago

        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…

        • RBWells@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          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.

        • dingus@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          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.

          • proudblond@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            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.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      3 hours ago

      All is a strecht… But yeah once marketing took over that function, it got turned into whatever the fuck we got now in the US🤡

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it’s insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.

    There shouldn’t be anything preventing me from figuring out women’s bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don’t know them and they probably don’t want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements.

      Men’s pants are sized based on the number of inches around the waist and the inseam. The inseam is stupid because it ignores the height from the waist to the crotch so relaxed fitting jeans will have a shorter inseam than a regular fit. I’m sure it is because it was standardized when higher waisted jeans and overalls and that kind of stuff was popular.

      But it doesn’t matter any more because the waist sizes can be off by a few inches anyway. It was literal, then became kind of close. Not as bad as women’s clothing, but it is brand specific depending on how hard they lean into vanity sizing.

  • sgibson5150@slrpnk.net
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    4 hours ago

    This might go some ways to explaining why I’ve never known a woman who liked buying or wearing bras. I’m comfortable blaming the patriarchy, which can absolutely get fucked.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I always figured it was like pants where a 34 waist from company A wouldn’t fit like one from B.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    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.