Clothing sizing in general is just arcane at this point.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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This. I mostly buy size S t-shirts, sometimes M, occassionally XS. I dont even care anymore.
If the shirt isn't xl, I can't raise my hands without showing my belly.
Also if the shirt is bigger than L, I'm swimming in it.
I have a long torso and broad shoulders, so I have to get xl tall shirts in some brands because most make their standard xl shirts wider but not taller than med and small.
Banana Republic is the shortest length. Hurley is the best length.
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Today years old.
It's also the fact that cup size is not necessarily independent from band size, that's where the trick is. I used to think I'm an A with a high band size as I'm huge with no booba, like a 39A or something but those never fit that well.
According to ABraThatFits methodology I'm actually 36C, which somehow does fit and super well, though by common and dudebro methodology I'm most certainly more of an "A cup" if that makes sense.
It's because whatever maniac invented the sizing scheme decided that every letter represents 2 inches more around your body at the weirdest boobage point than just below it. What a bonkers system! A woman with 38B bras is 38 inches around at the band, and 42 inches around at the girls. Nonsense. The way dudes THINK it works makes so much more sense.
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Have her go and get fitted. Many women don't know what their band/cup size really is.
Also, IMO, women's pant sizes are where the real absurdity in sizes is.
Not much help to know what cup size you are if the bra companies are only pretending to be standardized
Only knowing your cup size is not enough. You need to know the underbust size as well. A 32D and a 34C have cups with the same volume. Sure, there is still some variance but not as much as I thought before I learned that.
Edit: This calculator and the community of the same name on the-site-that-shall-not-be-named helped me a lot in finding my actual bra size. Now my only problem is that almost no company here has more than two or three bras in that size...
And it is more complicated even than that. I am a small busted woman and yet the best fit I can get is 34D. The 34 makes sense, underbust is 33. The D is what I measure but most have too much room. I still need that size because the circumference of the boobs fits in that wire; any smaller is too narrow.
I think bras need 3 measurements not 2. I need band 34, wire size D, cup capacity closer to C. And there are plenty of women in the opposite situation too, with more projection but smaller circumference.
So the non-standardized sizing is a workaround for that problem.
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Well, today years old. Thanks.
They aren't?
In theory they're standardized. But in practice, no they're not.
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There are plenty of brands that follow mostly standard sizing, as I understand it. But popular brands in the US (like Victoria Secret) generally don’t.
I fell down the r/abrathatfits rabbit hole one day, years ago. It’s fascinating.
I once talked to my girlfriend about bra sizes and how much i don't understand them. Then we both googled bra sizes and how often women wear the wrong size and fit and all. It's a whole science behind it and it's quite interesting. Now, 10 years later i still often think: oh no, she wears a bra that doesn't fit right and probably doesn't even know it.
Yup! “Oh, she should probably go down a band size and up a cup size” popped into my head one day and I laughed at the absurdity.
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit, because she’d never known any of it. No one taught her. Made me feel vaguely guilty of mansplaining, but it helped!
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Men's clothing sizes are a little dumb sometimes but I can usually take a tape measure to my waist and correctly order pants. Your guess is as good as mine what the difference between "boot cut" and "relaxed fit" are, and I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager. As in, I can compare a Medium I've had since the Dubya administration to an XL today. But getting fitted for a suit, they measure me in inches and the clothing is more or less sized in inches.
Women's clothing sizes have had two different ice pick lobotomies. Women come in a wider range of sizes and aspect ratios, women's clothing is pretty much universally designed to fit tighter, but on the rack they're given one meaningless size number. a 12 is bigger than a 10, who knows by how much, and there's nothing on the girl you can measure with a tape to get that number, and there is no standard here at all. Why they haven't revolted I have no idea.
I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager.
I thought that too, but it turns out I just got fat
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There is a whole NPR episode on women sizing and history of sizing in general.
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Oof, yeah I was about 23 and wanted to help my now wife to get some of the correct size, which was an almost impossible ordeal. Wanna hear the story? Fine:
Taking the two measures was the easy part (and doing it again during her period, because of course the size changes during the cycle, anything else would be too easy). Then I read that the cup size is the absolute difference between bust and band measurement no matter the band measurement. Furthermore since the material is elastic, for a good support, the band should be a tad below the measurement*.
So far so good, went to the store and there are only A-D cups everywhere, E if you're lucky. So basically no matter what exact measure they take between the cups, you're ok if you're thin and have small or somewhat big breasts, or you're a bit fuller and have tiny breasts. Everyone else is automatically screwed. If you're lucky enough to fall into those categories you then have to try on so many to sift through different positioning and forms of breasts until you find one that is comfortable. We had to order some all the way from the UK because it wasn't possible to get anything coming near the correct size here.
*women who wore normal cloth bras before and continued wearing the same size have felt that the elastic hasn't made things better necessarily. Can't find the source for that one right now though.
Just now.
The cup size SHOULD be the difference in inches between the circumference below the breast and circumference around the breast.
3" difference would be a C cup
5" would be DD.
Why they double up some letters and not others, I couldn't tell you. 🤷🏻♂️
My ex used to sell underwear.
Trying to buy bras for my wife has been an eye opening experience.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned here yet is the Wild West of standards once you get to big cup sizes. Apparently DD is the same as E, DDD is an F, and I've even seen a DDDD, which would be a G. Depending on cuts, brands, and styles, her size can go from a DD to an I.
Not to mention these things are like $100 for a "cheap" one. The amount of engineering it has to take to design that shit is probably a few years of grad school.
Not to mention these things are like $100 for a "cheap" one. The amount of engineering it has to take to design that shit is probably a few years of grad school.
There's a reason Playtex got to make space suits.
It’s not that they’re not standardized, there’s a thing called sister sizes
Here https://www.sizechart.com/brasize/sistersize/index.html
Your actual size is the lowest sister size
Just now.
When I was 25, my girlfriend complained about buying the same bra, same size, same material, same URL, from the same company, on their website, 2 years apart. The first ones fit really well, the second ones didn't fit at all.
Meanwhile, there's a shoe that I buy a pair of every few years. They release a new "version" about once per year, but the fit has been consistent, so I'm over a decade, and 6 pairs, into my purchase of them, with no problems.
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It was a long time ago that I realized that women’s clothing sizing was largely fiction. Trying to buy clothing for a girlfriend or (later) my wife based on the tag of something they already owned was an exercise in futility.
Right now reading the title of this post.
News to me
Today
Right now..
I never knew per se, I just assumed that like with all women's clothing sizes are a convenient fiction
Most of the bras that my girlfriend gets fits on her first try, although she does tend to prefer sister sizes over her real size. If your girlfriend is having issues with bras fitting, it might be worthwhile to read up on how bra sizes are actually calculated and do a measurement yourself. Funny enough, most girls don't seem to know how the bra size system works either and they just get their sizes through trial and error, which seems like what has happened here.
The letter by itself is fundamentally meaningless. A 32D is equivalent to a 34B! And most girls severely underestimate their actual size. What would colloquially be called a B or C is actually an E
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Also, sometimes different colours of fabric fit differently in the same bra size.
Most women don't wear bras that fit.
That inconsistency is not exclusive to women's undergarments... I bought a half-dozen of the same American Apparel hoodie in different colors... very different fits.
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Right now. I just tuned out all the complaining and assumed that it was a skill issue.
I'm both fat and tall. None of my fucking clothes have consistent sizes that fit. I'm not the least bit surprised that the clothing industry's greatest minds were defeated by breasts.
Good thing guy underwear doesn't give one fuck about the shape of the penis. They either mush it into the crutch to defeature the shlong, or they let the whole thing just flap around under loose shorts.
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