The Ballad of Mr. Underwire

They say that a man invented the bra. I think that’s true? If it is, no worries. I don’t have any hard feelings. There’s no reason I can think of as to why a man shouldn’t be able to grasp the basic engineering standards of how to support two teardrop-shaped orbs of flesh that are filled with adipose tissue and mammary gland. 

Whomever invented it, you have to admit that it’s a pretty clever idea. Kind of like capitalism or zero-calorie vodka: it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve been able to come up with so far. At some point in the not-too-distant future, maybe someone will think of something better, but for now, this is the best we have. 

Here’s how a bra works. There’s a band, and it’s supposed to go around your ribcage (for some of us, it’s ends up going around our waist, but we’ll get to that later). It’s fastened in place with a row of hooks. For a lot of gals, this band actually provides some pretty good support. Enough to keep the girls in place, horizontally anyway.

Then, there are a couple of straps. These little guys go over your shoulders, lending credence to the “over-the-shoulder boulder holder” axiom. Believe it or not, the whole machine isn’t constructed around the straps. If you have a bra with a proper fit, the straps do little more than maintain the vertical integrity of the jiggle factor. If you don’t want your titties jiggling around too much, you can tighten them up; if you don’t mind some feminine movement, you can loosen them a bit. 

Which leads to the cups. The heart and soul of a bra. These are the parts that the boobs actually go into. (I don’t know why this feels like the right time to mention it, but I heard somewhere that, like, eight out of every 10 women are wearing the completely wrong-sized bra). Anyway, the cup aspect is pretty self-explanatory. Too big, and you don’t get a lot of support because your boobs are moving around inside of them all day; too small, and you get spillage. 

I’ve heard that a lot of people like spillage; that overflow deal where your boob puffs out over the top of the cup. I know why they do… boobs are naughty little funbags, after all, and seeing them barely confined by this wonder of engineering, struggling to break loose, conjures up all sorts of reckless imagery. Maybe it’s because of the universal truth — every woman does, in fact, know exactly how her boobs look like, all the time. A woman, therefore, who is okay with the fact that her breasts are straining to burst forth from their confines, might be a little more willing to show them off to a potential suitor, should the opportunity arise.

This, of course, is a pretty stupid over-simplification. Just because a woman’s got some spillage going on doesn’t mean she’s a slut. It might just mean that she grabbed a bra off the shelf, and doesn’t really have any idea how big she is (Victoria’s Secret marketing aside, most women associate a bigger cup size with feeling fat). Or, it’s because she put on some weight, or maybe she’s having her period, and bras are expensive, dammit, and not all of us have a go-to period bra in our drawer. Or it’s in the laundry, or whatthehellever.

Or, she can just be like me, and have only one boob that looks like it’s rebelling, and if she went bigger, her left one would be sloshing around pretty drastically. Or, she could REALLY be like me, and just not be able to find a bra that’s any bigger than the few nearly identical ones that she has, while still being able to spend less than $250.

Where were we… Oh, yeah. So, there’s one more element of a bra that doesn’t get a lot of press. Out of sight, and out of mind. And that’s the underwire. 

Running along the bottom half of each cup, there’s a semicircle of industrial gauge metal that’s sewn up into the fabric. That’s the underwire, and it’s kinda like the superstructure of the bra. If the band keeps lateral movement under control, and the straps control the vertical, the underwire is some high-res stuff, like an analog gyroscope. On a normal breast, it balances everything out, and takes part in supporting the load, like the cleverer elements of a suspension bridge, supporting upwards precisely because everything is being pulled downward by the bitch-mistress of gravity.

While a lot of women would argue that the underwire is the secret to a great bra, they’ll also be the first to admit that it can also be super-uncomfortable, because it’ll dig in after a whole day (again, here’s a PSA I wish I would have heard back when it actually mattered to me… Get measured, dammit. You’ll thank yourself). And while they sell wire-free versions, look into any lingerie drawer, and you’ll find that most of them come equipped. 

There’s a catch, though. When a star explodes and collapses in on itself, sometimes, if its mass was great enough, it’ll form a black hole… a singularity where the normal laws of physics break down. Up becomes down; matter becomes antimatter; underwires become pointless and painful. 

And so it goes with breasts that have gotten as huge as mine have. I mentioned before that the few bras I do own, that I actually wear on a regular basis, are ones that I purchased off Amazon. They’re given names like “Goddess,” and yeah, they’re technically large enough to keep the girls reigned in. But when they were commissioned to be made at whatever Chinese factory manufactures them, they were based off the same old blueprints as their C- and D-cup counterparts. And that just doesn’t cut it.

My bra comes equipped with underwires, and I think this is proof positive that not a single person involved in the manufacturing process has breasts large enough to actually accommodate the helmet-sized cups. If there was such a person, there’s no way these bras would ever roll off the assembly line. Maybe they could use a consultant? If so, and if anyone knows the higher-ups at these companies, tell them I’ll be a guinea pig. 

In my case, the underwires end up resting or top of and around the sides of my belly. Standing completely straight, or flexing my back causes the whole bottom of the bra to lift away from my body. Sitting down forces the wires to dig painfully into my flesh, and for the tips of the wires to dig upwards into my armpit ladyfat. And of course, since bras in the N-cup range are few-and-far-between, the number that come wire-free is… nil.

This has been a long, somewhat drunken way of confessing that the first thing I do when a fresh bra comes in the mail, is pull out my sewing kit. I use a little scissors to cut a small hole in the armpit lady-fat area, and I take those suckers out. Then, and only then, do I get to relish in some semblance of semi-supported comfort. 

To this day, I’m not sure what the hell to do with the underwires I remove. Suffice to say, I try not to look at them very often, and generally throw them away pretty quickly. Staring at them for too long causes by back to reflexively hunch, my eyes to narrow, and a somewhat-defeated sigh to cross my lips. Coat hangers for very round-shouldered jackets is the best use I can come up with, so before too long, in the trash they go, ready to stab a hole in the garbage bag later on. But there is one pair I have lying around... I’ve attached a picture for reference.

So, that’s how I usually rock a bra. As I said at the start of this little essay, it’s not perfect. It’s just the best idea that exists right now. Brownie points will officially go to any savvy engineers out there who can recommend a viable alternative. I can’t guarantee you’ll get a MacArthur Fellowship, but you will have the eternal gratitude of all the mega-busty women of the world until the end of time. Or, until a new form of technology comes into being that is indistinguishable from magic.