I hate buying new bras

I hate buying new bras. The entire experience from start to finish is horrendous, and it gives me honest-to-goodness anxiety.

First of all, you have to go through the sizing nightmare, which is usually depressing. ("I'm a size what?") If you do the sizing yourself, you probably give yourself a headache trying to get the measurements right (bra sizing systems are bizarre to me). If you have someone professionally size you, at least you know you're getting the correct size, but you also have to face the embarrassment/discomfort of having someone else size your breasts. Even if you have the most professional helper in the world (ie someone who doesn't make you feel judged for being whatever size you are, and/or someone who doesn't make you feel like you're being accidentally or purposefully groped in the process) you still are having a stranger loop a measuring tape around the girls and call out just how small or large they are. Maybe there are women who don't have any qualms about this, but I am not one of them.

Then, once you've determined what size you are supposed to be wearing, you have to go through and try things on. Usually, trying on bras makes me feel like an alien in my own skin. This may not be as nightmarish for women with smaller breasts, but for me, every bra fits differently, and in this case, "different" is not fresh and wonderful. Feeling my boobs go up higher, down lower, in more, out more, flatter, perkier, smooshed closer together or held farther apart...well, it makes me crazy. After a few bras, I no longer have any idea what my boobs are supposed to feel like, and everything feels wrong. Because my bra-shopping trips usually come under the dire straits of I-NEED-A-NEW-BRA-SO-BAD-THAT-UNDER-NO-CONDITIONS-CAN-I-GO-HOME-WITHOUT-ONE, I eventually settle on whichever bra feels the least weird, and make my reluctant purchase.

Of course, the worst part (in my opinion) is taking a new bra home. Because then you put it on, and almost immediately regret having purchased the thing, because your boobs feel all wrong. You wiggle, you adjust the straps, you shift the girls around, you put a shirt on, take it back off and do it all over again in the hopes of making it feel right. But it doesn't feel right. It doesn't fit like the old bra did, and even though you know (you hope) that this new bra is better (because you wouldn't have bought the new bra unless you really, really needed it) you just don't feel right. That's usually when I break down in tears, because I just spent all this money on a bra that clearly makes me look like an alien (even though it doesn't).

I've been wearing the same style of bra, up or down in size, for the past 7 or 8 years. And I would have contentedly gone on buying the same bra for the foreseeable future, except that then came a baby, and the same old bra won't work--first of all, because I've gotten larger, but second, because breastfeeding is in my future. And so I faced the bra shopping nightmare, accompanied by my sweet husband, who made it slightly more bearable, though I did end up in tears shortly after arriving home. I suppose that such is the life of the female, but I don't think I will ever stop hating this particular necessity.