An Outing with The Girls

I had a store credit at Nordstrom, so yesterday after I'd swung by my friend Jan's to see how she's doing after falling out of a tree (fine, and she's very adept in her temporary wheelchair), I drove to Walnut Creek to buy bras.

(Male readers may want to stop right here.)

You know how bras are: you find one you like, you buy several, you wear them and wear them, and then the elastic's shot, or you catch sight of your reflection in a window and you'd like to look a little more--pert? Time to tangle with the bra department again.   It's a given that the style you've loved will have been discontinued.

 I worked in the lingerie department of the Emporium one summer while I was in college, and I can tell you I don't like being on the selling or the buying end of a bra purchase.  Unless you go to Costco or Target--and I have friends who have good luck there--buying a bra is time-consuming and uncomfortable.

During my absence, a few things had changed.  For one thing, cup sizes now to go GG. 

 "Why?" I asked Shannon, my young salesperson with perfect make-up and flaming red hair.   "Is everyone having boob jobs?"   She laughed nervously.  Nearly all bras now have molded cups, which the salespeople recommend you wash by hand. If you look too stunned, they'll back down and say, "or in a lingerie bag on the gentle cycle."

Shannon helped me find my size and preferred style and installed me in a dressing room. The lighting was merciless. The bras didn't fit. She didn't appear. I studied my hair color in the three-way mirror; definitely fading. For the hell of it, I pulled on my t-shirt over one of the ill-fitting bras and decided I looked, well, lifted. Finally, I dressed and went to find Shannon.

"Oh," she said brightly. "Do you want to be fitted?"  

She measured me and handed me a test bra.

"Settle the girls in," she directed. Turns out I'd been wearing the wrong size.   The right size felt tight. She left me to decide between the "right" size and one I could breathe in.

I didn't get home until 8:30. I dropped the shopping bag on the kitchen floor, where it still sits. Maybe I'll try on what I bought, or maybe I'll procrastinate on that, too.  You see why.

Remember these ads?  So confident and with such a firm midriff.

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