"To avoid booby traps, stay away from bras" Jarod Kintz
A young girl getting her first bra is commonly understood as a sort of Rite of Passage in America. Posh mommies may take their blossoming daughter to a department store for her first soft cup, cool and stylish mothers hit up Victoria's Secret for their smallest (and least sexy) push up, and the rest of us tend to find ourselves selecting something practical from Target or Walmart that we secretly hope to not get much wear out of before we have to size up.
I would like to propose a second lingerie Rite of Passage: when a woman finally learns about bra fit and learns her real bra size. Somewhere around 80% of women in America are wearing the wrong bra size. It really isn't a surprise when you consider how warped clothing sizes tend to be, but at least bra sizing is fairly well standardized within countries with a few brands having their own weird exceptions. Are we just a country of ladies who don't understand how to properly use a tape measure? Not at all, but we are a country of women being pandered to by a company focused on squishing us into a narrow range of bra sizes. No, Victoria's Secret isn't entirely to blame. I could wax poetic for hours on here about how society messes with women's view of their own bodies, but if you wanted to read that you'd be reading a sociological journal and not a blog. So VS's warped business tactics are a great (and reasonably short) thing to talk about.
