"Your boobs are about to bust out, go bra shopping already!"
My sister pointed this out to me during Christmas 2008. I was seventeen years old, and (I thought) a 32C. I did not notice until that moment how the tops of my breasts were spilling out of the cups, like excess batter in a cake pan. I didn't always have large breasts, and in high school never thought I would become a card carrying member of the DD+ Club nor aspired to be one. My older sister and aunt are perticular well endowed and I've seen first hand the issues big breasts can cause. At sixteen I was happily buying 32B bras without a thought, they were cute and seemed to fit.
But after those holidays were over I went to Target and grabbed a 32C. In the fitting room I noticed how it pulled and did not contain my breast tissue properly. There was no D in the 32 band, so I tried a 34C and noticed the same issue. Gulping, I found a 34D and went back to the stall, not thinking it would actually fit. It did (or seemed to). I was schocked. A D cup was huge! Something women my size (I was a zero-two at the time) could not possibly be that large without pulling a Pamela Anderson. But I bought the bra and slowly began to accept my fate as a small girl with a large endowment. A few months later I was fitted as a 32DD and continued to wear that size for a couple years, but I was still plagued by problems. My straps perpetually fell off my shoulders, the underwires never sat properly on my rib cage, and finding clothes that both fit and flattered my chest was almost impossible.
Earlier this year I finally figured out the correct way to measure bra size and have settled into a 28G/GG. Whenever it comes up peoples' jaws tend to drop but as anyone who has discovered they are a small band/large cup can probably attest, my chest looks more compact and less ungainly than it ever did in my 32/34DDs. My ribcage actually measures 26.5 inches loose, and you are supposed to measure band size tightly so I'm toying with trying a 26 band from my new favorite company Ewa Michalak, who to my knowledge is the only bra-maker that produces 24 and 26 bands. I hope this will change in the future, and maybe cataloging my journey and experiences will in some small way contribute to bringing that change about.
