Lessons Learned From a New Bra
Words by Rachel Nevergall
I sit bleary eyed in front of my computer with 22 tabs open on my internet browser, all with images of bra clad women.
This was not how I pictured this going.
I should be in a lingerie store relying on the expertise of a bra fit technician telling me the appropriate sizing for my body. I don’t want to have to know what is good for my body. I don’t even know this body anymore.
I finished nursing my 18 month old sometime at the end of last year. He is my third and final baby. Since 2011 my body traveled the journey of pondering a baby, conceiving a baby, growing a baby, and feeding and caring for a baby. This body has been a borrowed space. Most importantly, my breasts have not been my own for nearly eight years. It seems only fitting (pun intended) to celebrate this big life change with the purchase of a new bra.
When I made the decision to go bra shopping this year, however, I did not predict a global pandemic. Alas, here we are, with only the internet to tell me what I need to know.
One company offering a fit finder quiz catches my eye. I wonder if this quiz is more the Buzz Feed "Which Sponge Bob character should you date" quiz rather than the "Name all 45 Vice Presidents in alphabetical order" quiz. Curious, I click on the link.
The first question feels like an attack.
How old is your current bra? 6 months, 6-12 months, 1-2 years, or more than 2 years.
I am baffled. Do people buy bras more frequently than two years? I peek inside my shirt at my saggy, sweat stained nursing bra I wear despite no longer nursing. I am certain all of my bras are as old as the breasts they hold.
***
I snagged my first bra from a pile of hand me downs my mom gave me to sort through. This find was a relief. The locker room during gym class told me changes were happening to my peers. While they paraded their new bras under our matching gym shirts, I wore my barely budding breasts, well, bare. A bra would serve little purpose for my chest. But you don’t care about practical when you are 13; you care about fitting in. I needed to talk to my mom about buying a bra, but discussing these growing changes to my body with my mother was as embarrassing as the changes themselves. I didn’t understand this body or who I was in it. My confidence was the size of my breasts. So when I saw a fading white cotton bralette peeking out from under a pair of flower leggings, I snatched it. Maybe wearing a bra would grant me this super-power of self assurance it seemed everyone else possessed but me.
***
I try to push away the shame as I choose the "more than 2 years" category and click through to the next question: What is the size of your best fitting bra?
There are many numbers I retain in my brain. How many times I must ask "please put on your shoes" before the children comply? Approximately 13. How many bananas a toddler will eat in one day? 3.5 on average. My bra size? No clue. It just never used to matter. I always used to care less about the proper fit of a bra and more about how I looked.
***
Two completely unrelated events happened around my 20th birthday—I got my first boyfriend and I discovered I had boobs. A total coincidence, I swear. This boy wished me happy birthday with 20 pink carnations, grabbed my heart and I held on tight. We grew up together, shared dreams, promised forever. Before our wedding, my girlfriends showered me with new bras, fancy ones, ones that were stylish and sexy. Their lacy straps and silky patterns were a far cry from the nude push up bra I grabbed during a group Target run in college. These made me feel grown up and wild, words that seem contradictory but not to a 25 year old. Being "grown up" meant I COULD be wild—with my freedom, with my choices, with my dreams. In my twenties, with the confusing burden of adolescence behind me, I felt safe to explore who I was and what mattered to me. I took as many risks with career changes as I took in my wardrobe. I spent money I didn’t have but under the abused manifesto of our youth, YOLO. Instead of consulting my friends for every decision, I began living life on my own terms. It was like growing into my breasts gave me confidence I didn’t know I had—confidence to let a hot pink bra strap peek from behind my shirt, or on the bravest of days, letting the boobs fly free with no bra at all. If only I knew to enjoy them while I had them—the boobs and the freedom.
***
What breast shape most resembles you? Now the questions were getting serious.
I scan the pictures for the "Tired" label. A picture in the bottom left corner shows breasts that could be mistaken for those inflatable snowman decorations at Christmas, lying limp on lawns without inflation. I read the label under the picture. "Relaxed." Is that what I am? I’m not tired, just relaxed? I look back at my reflection standing naked in the mirror and I see there is no doubt. Tired or relaxed, whatever you call it, these breasts are spent.
***
"It was the boobs that gave it away," my female coworkers told me as I announced my first pregnancy. I shouldn’t have been surprised. My chest was pornographic. If it wasn’t for the What to Expect When You’re Expecting bible, I might think the baby was growing in my boobs. They swelled like two water balloons barely contained behind my double layer of sports bras.
I thought that was the worst of it. I was wrong. Six months later I delicately balanced my three day old baby girl in front of a breast the size of her head trying not to feel like a dairy cow. This time my confidence did NOT match the size of my breasts. How is this enough for her? How am I enough?
It was, and I was, but it would take me months, years even, to grow my motherly confidence. It was different from the confidence of my twenties. This time my bravery came from the supportive women around me showing me the beauty of motherhood, guiding me along the way. I could be confident, but not without support.
My breasts grew to nourish my babies and my heart grew along with it. But so did the bras. With each new baby the elastic in my nursing bras stretched to accommodate. And like the breasts they contained, by the third child they hung lifeless from my shoulders.
My breasts and bras served a purpose, but not without a price.
***
Reluctantly I select the link labeled "Relaxed," and the quiz immediately validates me with a response.
Lots of women have relaxed breasts! Thank you, fit finder quiz. It is kind of you to normalize this for me.
I wonder how a quiz on a website knows how to pick the right bra just for me. With my children growing up, needing me less, some days I feel like that gangly teen I once was growing into my new body. I doubt how a new bra will fit the person I am now, when I am still learning who that is.
I look down at my saggy boobs barely contained behind the stretched too thin nursing bra. These breasts require more support than this tiny piece of fabric offers them. If I learned anything in my thirties it is this—take the support when it is given. I am a better mother, partner, friend when I welcome the care of others to lift me up. A better bra will serve me well.
And yet, sometimes I long for the carefree spirit of my twenties. I want to feel the freedom of not being contained by my choices, to take risks, to be brave. There is joy in this confidence. And sometimes a girl just wants to let her boobs go free!
I think about the journey my breasts have taken over the years—timid and unknowing, confident and free, nourishing and spent. Perhaps they taught me more about myself than I once thought. They taught me confidence is more than what I wear, to take support when I need it, and to be free when I don’t. This is the knowledge no bra fit technician could ever reveal to me.
This is the knowledge I discover for myself.
With this assurance, I hit “purchase,” nervous but excited for the next part of this journey—for my breasts, and for myself.
About the Author:
Rachel Nevergall—mother of three and wife to a man who is WAY better at cleaning the kitchen—is a Minnesotan newbie, curator of family adventures, builder of epic train tracks, lover of all of the library books, mixer of fancy cocktails, and writer in the in-between. She shares her stories as a regular contributor at Twin Cities Mom Collective, other online publications such as Coffee+Crumbs, The Kindred Voice Magazine, Kindred Mom, and on her blog RachelNevergall.com.
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