lois lane and superman

...or how a fellow Geek Girl and an undergarment most people take for granted changed my life.

First of all, the disclosure: I am not a paid reviewer of any product. If I'm reviewing it, it's because I parted with my hard-earned money to acquire it.

It all started with an Epbot post. Go. Click the link. Read. And then come back here. I'll wait.

Back? Ok. So I read that post when it originally aired back in 2013. I paid it no heed. Learn from my mistakes. Go back and read through all the embeded links. I'll still be here.

Now that you've read the entire post and all the links including the Reddit one on to the good stuff.

I hate shopping for clothes. I've got my reasons, but the clothing I hate shopping for the most are the "unmentionables". I hate it because they never fit right. I always feel worse after a trip to the "fitting room" - a total misnomer by the way since most off-the-rack clothes don't actually fit and there's no one there to fit them to you, but I digress...

I hate bras. With the fire of 10,000 burning suns. I've gone through phases of shopping at Victoria's Secret and being "fitted" there (hahahahahah) and just grabbing whatever utilitarian thing of the rack at Target in an attempt to cover the hoobies. For years, I've gone without and just worn a thick tank top underneath whatever shirt I'm wearing. But some things require a bra and there we are.

I sew clothes for myself and have for quite a while and I was always confused as to why my clothes never fit correctly in the top and I always had to grab 4-6 inches from the back to make everything fit properly. When I finally read through ALL the links in the Epbot post and actually measured myself for a bra, I had an epiphany. The secret is that my underbust is 35" and my actual bust measurement is 44". That is a 9" difference, yo. I should have been making a "full bust adjustment" to my clothes to account for my larger (yet smallish) chest.

So I obeyed my geeky overlord and duly ordered a bra from Brastop.com using my actual measurements converted to UK sizing (I'm a 36F, BTdubs). The first bra I ordered was too small. I went with a 34" band because I'm between sizes. Yeah, nope. FULL of nope. Had to send it back and Brastop and pay return shipping but that's the price you pay for living in the USA and ordering from the UK. The return process was super easy and since the replacement bra was actually less expensive, I got a refund via paypal. Sweet!

I eventually ended up with the Fantasie Lois Side-Support Bra in nude. You can get it here.

from Fantasie's website

That's not me in the picture. I'm not quite that good looking in person but pretty darn close.

Style: It's a bra. I don't know what I expected it to be based on the picture, but when I received it, it looked just a little sad being all flat and stuff (no padding whatsoever in the bra). But who cares what it looks like? It FITS!!!

Fit: This thing fits like a glove. A very supportive glove. The band is 36" and fastening it in the first set of hooks is a perfect fit. Snug without being squeezy. Generally speaking band size affects strap placement. The straps are set very wide on this bra. Which is perfectly fine for me because I have broad shoulders for someone so small (I'm 5'2"). It also means that all the side boobage gets confined in the cups.

Bonus: The center part where the little bow is comes up very high in the center. This is good because it holds my posture erect. I don't know about you, but I tend to slouch a bit and this is like a teeny ruler down the front of my shirt saying "Don't do it, missy!" It also causes me to hold my shoulders down and rolled slightly back - another posture improver.

Overall, I'm thoroughly pleased with this bra. It fits my hard-to-fit boobs. And that was worth the price of admission AND the wait for international shipping.