I dreamt I was a blogger in my Maidenform bra.

For a long time, pretty much since I developed a healthy set of breasts during puberty, I refused to buy into the lingerie industry. Everything was too risque, too painful, too unnecessary for my otherwise chastity-belted lifestyle. Indeed, I quit looking in Victoria's Secret the day I went in and got measured by a frighteningly aggressive Russian woman who promptly declared me a 44A and told me I was a large-ribcaged, small-boobied freak. In not so many words, but I was an impressionable teenager trying to shop for nice bras. In reality, I am a comfortable 38B, a size which until recently was dastardly hard to find at the stores catering to the 32-36C set. (Whoever wears a 32C, that is totally whack.) As much as I love the media, they certainly make you think every woman is walking around in matching La Perla lingerie, ready for work, play, and naughty time with hunky men, but really? It will be a cold day in hell when I have the wherewithal to put on matching bra and panties, and we're just talking color here.

As for my bra credo now, so many years later, there are three simple rules:
1. Lightly lined or padded, but not push-up or anything ridiculous and unnatural. I don't want nipple showing (inappropriate! distracting!), but I don't want water-jiggly pads shifting and gooshing around.
2. No jabby, pointy, or digging bits. There has been many a day when I thought I'd mistakenly put on a whale-bone corset with all of the pain poorly made underwires have caused me.
3. Must balance out your figure nicely, no smashing or extreme perkiness allowed.

A recent trip to our local Macy's resulted in major brassiere success after I rampaged the racks for anything and everything 38B (it's such a nice, well-rounded, pleasantly zaftig bra size, don't you think?), thanks to Maidenform:

I tried on about twenty bras--ladies, it's as much of a hassle as trying on jeans, only you get to jump up and down to test the bounce factor--to find three that worked quite nicely for my purposes. The first was a black lace Maidenform demi-cup, whatever the hell that means. It's my new fancy-time bra. You know, the kind of bra that makes you feel a little more fancy on the inside without being all silk and leopard print and loony-tunes?

In the end, the best bra I found was again from Maidenform, the Smooth Bra. When they say smooth, they mean it. Looking at the thing on the hanger in bubblegum pink with cup edges looking like they'd just been hacked at by a pair of pinking shears, you wouldn't think it's the most amazing bra ever. Seriously? If you were to fashion a bra out of softened butter, this would be it. Butter. Cushy, smushy, comfortable as all get-out, and supports the girls like they were holding hands and singing "Kumbaya". Check out the difference, taken from the Maidenform website:

I feel like a woman on a MISSION in this bra--admittedly, not hard to do, being driven as I am, but DAMN. Every bra I've owned until these has made me feel frumpy and blah, it's incredible what a new piece of undergear can do for a girl. Next up, no-VPL panties! Look out!

Images from ? and maidenform.com.