Plus Size Stores: Where Big Boobs Go to Cry

One thing I won't miss, after my breast reduction, is visiting the big girl store to purchase bras that cost more than a bottle of George Clooney premium tequila. I go to places called Addition Elle, and Pennington's, where they also sell tents advertised as dresses.

These stores are chock-a-block full of friendly fitters who proudly show off their own girls in cheap looking jersey material. Jersey is usually what they sell skinny girls who buy at Old Navy and H&M. Jersey is sold at the big girl's store for what you would pay for silk anywhere else. I suppose it's because of the yardage needed to cover a larger frame.

I'm not using the word "fat" here because fat is a term that is offensive. I am certainly not fat, but I am big boobed at a size 42 H which is the retail term for Huge. I cannot buy tops anywhere else but the Huge Girl's Store because they don't fit around my boobs. Sometimes, I can get shirts at Value Village but those are mostly men's shirts and the sleeves are made for orangutans.

Unfortunately, you can't buy a bra in a men's store (sorry Mr. Costanza, the manzierre never caught on) and you wouldn't, shouldn't, couldn't buy a used one at Value Village -- I mean just imagine! -- so I have to go to the place where Plus Size Goes to Cry.

Whoever designs these mamm catchers should be sentenced to hard labor in a Chinese underwear factory.

The trend now, thanks to people like Julia Roberts promoting us to Go All In (a promo that is really trying to get you to eat Special K, which is like eating milk soaked cardboard) is to wear bras that allow us to embrace their inner Mae West. (See the ad here.)

In other words, just let it all hang out.




Sorry, Julia. I don't want to embrace it. I want to erase it. I'm only human.

And the bras don't help.

The bras they sell today are friggin' huge, padded with dead polyesters and constructed using titanium underwire that surely makes the metal detectors at the airport go berserk. These kinds of bras are designed to make the girls look happy. Or as CNN might say, they allow her to go "Out Front".

I was talked into buying one of these babies a few years ago. They only had it in pink, in a color and paisley pattern that would make any pathologist swoon. (This photo is of an anal melanocytes, which is actually anal cancer, and that is what that damned bra resembled: ass cancer.)

I wore it a few times, and my daughter Marissa indeed remarked that my girls looked very happy.

They weren't, of course, because the polyester blend gave me a rash and the underwire gave me blisters. What happened under my boobs was nothing short of a lab rat's wet dream. Sweat pooled under it, causing my shirts to look as if my midriff had been swimming in the Caribbean.

I soon dispatched this monstrosity but before I did, Scott and I did a photo shoot in the backyard with Sesame Street characters; it was awesome.

I've tried various sorts of bras.

Fortunately, I missed the corset and girdle stage, but did come in at the end of the Playtex 18 hour bra phase. These were the ones that gave you pointy tits and they lasted for ever and ever. But then, they disappeared, and were replaced by the "minimizer" which was simply a bra designed to allow the wearer to place their fun bags into a smaller contraption. I loved the minimizer and I still have one, but unfortunately, if you wear one long enough you feel like you've stuffed your boob into a tube sock.

Ouch.

Then came the aforementioned Happy Tits bra.

And don't even get me started on the sports bras they make for Big Boobs. They are hard to find and they live up to the reputation of all sports bras which schmush up your boobs so you look like you're wearing a bullet proof vest under your lycra tee.

Now, I just try to find ones that fit. I have three. They don't have much support but they don't make me look like I'm wearing a restaurant awning.

There is one other solution, of course, and that is the no bra look. My neighbor is bigger than me -- I think she's a Z cup. She can't find bras that fit so she simply rests her ladies on the top of her tummy. They sway a bit, but largely, she doesn't look so bad.

That doesn't work for me because of the sweat pooling situation. If I sit too long without wearing a bra, it appears as if my breasts are actually crying.

So breast reduction it is! La Senza, here I come. Three for $20. I'm in!