September 17, 2006

In Which I Declare Myself The Victor In The Breast Wars

Here’s a multiple choice test to get you in the mood for today’s column. If you saw this, what would you do?

1. Grab a frying pan, a mallet, butter, capers, lemon juice, and wine and make a delicious chicken piccata.

2. Say, “Modern art doesn’t interest me very much, but I hear there’s a fabulous new lunch place down the street.”

3. Slap those suckers on your chest and strut your stuff like Dolly Parton.

All are good answers, but in my world, the correct answer is 3.

Behold: the NuBra.

Those of you who have been keeping up with the replica of my breast I made out of food and the embarrassment I suffered when I tried on approximately forty bras with Bill’s help due to a roller-blading accident (rather than privately as I had planned) will be happy to hear that the Breast Wars are over.

First, a little background on my bra situation prior to the beginning of the wars. Before I discovered that there is a bra for women like me (women with itty-bitty titties topped with fireplug nipples), I was resigned to the fact that if I wanted a bra that actually fit, I’d be wearing two triangles of fabric with a little rosebud centered between them. This is the kind of bra you buy in the preteen section at Macy’s–the ones where the package shows some girls at a sleepover painting each others’ nails. When the wars began, at a minimum I hoped to purchase a bra from the women’s department bearing a tag that pictured an actual grownup wearing the bra (preferably a woman).

The best solution I had found to hide my perma-nips was the NuBra, which is a sticky, gel-like breast form you stick on top of your boobs. You can use it as a regular bra or a strapless bra, if you’re small-breasted, like me. As long as you wash it off after each use, you can wear it over and over.

The NuBra has two drawbacks. One is that it’s funny looking, which is why Bill often says,”You wearing those chicken breasts out tonight?”

The other is that the forms don’t stick so well when you have sweaty boobs.

Aunt Lulu had a lovely outdoor wedding on a sweltering day in May 2004. In Alabama. Here is a picture of me just before the ceremony, when both sides of my NuBra were firmly attached to my breasts, sort of filling up the front of my extremely pink dress.

There were four bridesmaids, and we all stood in the searing sun wearing our chicken breasts as Aunt Lulu and her husband promised and vowed. Just as I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back, I heard a thwa-kink! and another thwa-kink! and I realized that my NuBra had popped off and was nestling in the band of my dress between my boobs and my stomach. A moment later I heard several fainter, but unmistakable thwa-kinks! on both sides of me, and soon there were four bridesmaids standing up front with eight uncovered nipples in thin Pepto dresses. We walked down the aisle with our NuBras lying limply at the bottom of the bodice of our dresses.

I tried to stick it back on several times, but it was a hot day and I was dancing and sweaty and therefore unsuccessful. Here’s a picture of me later, after I stuffed the chicken breasts in my purse and resolved to party all night, regardless of nipple protrusion.

“My dress is caving in and I don’t care! Cheers to Aunt Lulu!”

So the NuBra is good, but not great in my climate. A real bra that fastens with straps and snaps would have been helpful in that circumstance.

Another recent discovery I’ve made is this product:

Low Beams are basically flower-shaped band-aids that you put on your bosoms to paste your nipples down. They certainly flatten my Tootsie Rolls, but they don’t add any fluffiness to my pancake. And at $9 for 5 pair, I find them pricey. I do like the package, though, which has a key ring and the slogan “Headlights are for cars.”

Because neither the NuBra nor the Low Beams fully met my boobie needs, I whiled away an afternoon at a lingerie shop while I was in New York waiting on Aunt Lulu to have her large bundle of joy. There an elderly woman measured me and pronounced me a 34AA, not a 36AA as the last three “breast experts” had. My bust size is difficult to assess, not because I’m uncooperative or unduly modest, but because I have a hump under my right shoulder blade because of my scoliosis, and even my second spine surgery didn’t reduce it. Apparently I stood different ways for the various women who measured me and that accounted for the discrepancy in the calculations.

The difference between a 34 and a 36 mattered because the cups in a 34AA are smaller than those in a 36AA, and tinier cups were exactly what I needed, as I illustrated with fruit in the second part of my description of the wars.

Once I had the correct numbers and letters to work with, the sales lady advised me that Wacoal is great with petite bras, and her suggestions were right on the money.

To my great delight, I arrived home with five bras that fit.

I bought this bra in ivory and nude:

You can just take my word for it that it doesn’t mush in if you press on it, and there’s no extra room for an avocado or turnip in the cup.

Then I bought this bra because it has a bow:

You do remember that Bill has a thing for bows, don’t you?

That’s why I think he’ll go wild for this bra, which I bought in nude and black:

That’s not just a bow; it’s a lace-up mini-corset looking thing, which is far sexier than anything I’ve ever worn on a bra before. I don’t think this ad gives you a true picture of the vixenish quality of this brassiere. For a lady used to slapping silicone chicken breasts on her front and calling it a day, this is a definite improvement.