A new Facebook group, Busts4Justice, has been hitting the papers recently calling on lingerie retailers to stop adding to the cost of bras above the high street standard (A to C/D) size.
It has long been a mystery to me why high street shops carry on with limiting their stock to such small sizes when the average woman, if correctly measured, would apparently wear a 34E. On the one hand we are told to get measured and, usually, once measured, we are told we are some ridiculously large cup size - and on the other hand, the only bras available on the high street are in teensy sizes. Surely the stores would be raking it in if they started selling bras that fit the average woman?
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Putting an end to ASBOs for fat
The problem with controlling your size and shape in one area of your body is that invariably the 'fall-out' makes itself noticed somewhere else. It's a bit like giving fat an ASBO - it just turns up elsewhere causing the same problems.
This has long been a problem with lipo, and also with bras - by squeezing the chest into a great cleavage, you end up with bulges around the bra straps on your back. OK, so it's not a major world problem, but it's enough of an issue for bra manufacturers to invent a back-fat-less bra, the Bra-llelujah. (Which is one of most unattractive but practical-looking bras I have ever seen). The jokily religious connotation of the name is not all that inappropriate - women are clearly expected to worship this ingenious garment.
Was there any time in history, I wonder, when a woman's back fat was considered sexy, when the sight of a roll of flesh oozing out of the top of a corset-back was seen as sensual and beautiful?
An article from the Women's Home Companion in 1912 makes it clear this was not the case a century ago: 'Let me tell you that the fat woman looks much better in a corset an inch or so too large for her, where her fat can sink down into it, rather than in a corset two or three inches too small which presses her fat up and out until it appears in many unsightly bulges and bumps....The woman who has perfect corset sense is she who wears a corset right in size, right in shape, and so perfectly fitted that the corset and figure seem one.'
But it's not just 'fat' women who have this issue - any woman not very slim who wears a tight corset or bra is going to end up with back fat.
This has long been a problem with lipo, and also with bras - by squeezing the chest into a great cleavage, you end up with bulges around the bra straps on your back. OK, so it's not a major world problem, but it's enough of an issue for bra manufacturers to invent a back-fat-less bra, the Bra-llelujah. (Which is one of most unattractive but practical-looking bras I have ever seen). The jokily religious connotation of the name is not all that inappropriate - women are clearly expected to worship this ingenious garment.
Was there any time in history, I wonder, when a woman's back fat was considered sexy, when the sight of a roll of flesh oozing out of the top of a corset-back was seen as sensual and beautiful?
An article from the Women's Home Companion in 1912 makes it clear this was not the case a century ago: 'Let me tell you that the fat woman looks much better in a corset an inch or so too large for her, where her fat can sink down into it, rather than in a corset two or three inches too small which presses her fat up and out until it appears in many unsightly bulges and bumps....The woman who has perfect corset sense is she who wears a corset right in size, right in shape, and so perfectly fitted that the corset and figure seem one.'
But it's not just 'fat' women who have this issue - any woman not very slim who wears a tight corset or bra is going to end up with back fat.
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