Gs are for spelling

It makes all the difference. Everyone who has been to a proper fitting will tell you it is life changing. I ignored the endorsements for the longest time -turned off by the dollar signs I knew a bra from a place that does proper sizing would demand. I was also repelled by the fear that a tiny measuring tape-wielding woman would tell me that my breasts were even bigger than I imagined. Silly of course, being in denial about their size doesn’t make them any smaller. Side and top boob escaping from each double D cup assured me of that.

Sigh.

 

I finally ventured to Nordstrom’s, resigned to the need for a bra that would fit, and skeptical that it would make much of a difference. Karma came along for support (actually, truthfully, she came for her own amusement).

I wandered around for a little bit, looked at price tags and tried to hide my shock and dismay at the expense of so little material. I’d paid less for jeans and dresses than the price of these whimsical fragments of fabric and wire. Of course, the larger the cup size the more fabric and wire it involved, but only so much…even my breasts weren’t bigger than legs or butt – mine or anyone else’s.

A smiling salesperson approached me and asked how she could be of service. “I need to be sized,” I gestured toward my chest and she smiled warmly, as accustomed to such a request as if i'd asked for the bathroom, and assured me that Sue would be able to help me. 

Sue asked me what size bra I wore and then gazed mildly at my chest for a few moments, then she led me into a spacious changing room with an arm full of black bras and a measuring tape. It turns out, asking my size is more about getting an idea – understanding that the idea is most assuredly wrong. Her tools were there to drive that point home.

I stood a little defensively in the soft light of the dressing room. It was the size of a small bedroom. Space enough for me, Sue, and Karma. Karma, staked out in the corner leaning against the wall, smirked at my reflection in the mirror. 

Sue went to work, wrapping the measuring tape around my waist- just below my breasts, just over them.  Then, as instructed, I stripped to the waist and she pulled out three bras from the menagerie of bras hooked across her arm. She chirped pleasantly, white noise in the background of my brain screaming against this seeming indignity.

“We use these bras as fitting bras, they tend to be accurate in terms of the other bras. Once we get you sized here we can try on different types and see what you like.”

This is the part of the story where my boobs illustrated their sense of humor. My boobs didn’t really fit any of those bras. Too big in one size they were too small in the size below. Even Sue was perplexed. Her hands on her tiny hips and her head cocked to the side, she reached back into the myriad of bras she’d carried in and studied them carefully as if discerning a foreign language or forgotten song. 

“Hmmm,” she seemed to both breathe and sigh. 

“I’m sorry…” I offered reluctantly, an apology felt appropriate, as if my breasts were misbehaving and I should have trained them better. 

Sue smiled brightly and seemed to settle on an idea in her head. “I think we can start with Gs and Hs.” I didn’t really hear anything after that. I think she promised to be back with some selections but really I barely noticed she wasn’t there anymore.

What the hell was this willow wisp of a woman talking about? Gs and Hs were letters of the alphabet that should never be associated with breasts. Other than my sisters pregnancy boobs – filled with milk – I’d never heard of such a size. DD had seemed obscene a few years back and now here we were flying past the Ds, riding fast and loose with letters I usually only spell with. 

Sue reemerged, bright as ever, her arms loaded with an array of colors and styles of bras that I had never seen in my size…ever. Stylish and beautiful bras were always for the tiny or pert set. The bras with the little bows and thin straps. A friend with less than a handful of breasts once handed me a cute little bra with thin little straps to try on, and I lost it. “What? Do you want me to cut my arms off with these thin little straps?” For her, bras were more decoration than utility. She had no idea how heavy they can be, how cruel on your back it can be to hold them aloft. It was the last time I went bra shopping with anyone under a D cup. 

Back in the dressing room, Sue helped me into and out of a series of bras. She adjusted my straps and the breasts nestled inside each cup to get the proper look and to see if it was an actual fit. Sue was nothing if not thorough. 

A handful of bras waiting for my final decision, Sue turned her attention to Karma who maintained she was a B cup. Sue assured her she was not. Fifteen minutes later and she was nestling Karma’s breasts into beautiful bras. Turns out she was a D cup and the variety of D cups was pretty extensive. Beautiful and artistic looking bras that were utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing.

In my corner, watching Karma beam, I lamented, “oh great, you have cute pert boobs and I have stripper boobs- I look like I should be on a pole.”

Sue looked up from Karma’s fitting and shook her head as vehemently as she could manage on her tiny little frame, “you COULD you could,” she assured me with too much enthusiasm, “people pay for those, you could be a stripper!” She smiled brightly and Karma, dastardly friend that he is, almost fell to the flor laughing hysterically. Sue seemed unable to grasp why that was neither comforting nor anything close to what I was aspiring to. A few minutes in, Karma heaved herself upright and tried to catch her breath but when she made eye contact with my disgruntled face in the mirror she dissolved into another set of hysterical giggles.

Less certain of what was going on now, Sue excused herself from the room, leaving behind a panoply of bras for us to decide exactly what we wanted to buy and to allow us to finish laughing at what? I’m sure she wasn’t sure. 

Sue and the ridiculous wad I spent on bras and underwear are seared into my brain. But at least I have been assured by a tiny little woman who can wear cute little bras with thin cutting straps, that if I ever need to buy more bras I can spend a little time on a pole and possibly earn the cash I need.

Hypocritical Thirst

Hypocrisy is a fierce and greedy beast.

When I lived in rural South Africa I seethed with an intense disgust every time I went to Pretoria and passed the various consulate and international houses that lined some of the streets. They were magnificent houses – I assume. It was hard to tell much from the stone walls latticed with ivy purposefully woven along the front surface. Without fail there would be a small sprinkler system aimed at the roots of that ivy spraying incessantly. The water, having already saturated the roots, continued to trickle, leaving a dark patch of mud meandering into the street. Water puddled. No one seemed to notice.

 But I noticed.

Stepping past puddles of water I would rant to whoever was nearby to hear or simply in my own head, “How dare they water a stone wall? How dare they waste something the women in my village walk for hours to reach?”

But that was Pretoria and I lived in Makushoaneng, only a few hours – if worlds – away. In Makushoaneng it was normal to see women walk beyond the perimeter of the village with jerricans or buckets. Hours later they would return with receptacles sloshing lightly on their head, balanced neatly on the checha (folded cloth that keeps the bucket in place). Potable or contaminated, the state of the water depended on how far they were willing to walk. An open source nearby or further still. The pump at the center of town had been broken since before I arrived. We’d had meetings about fixing it, but when I left, two years later, the pump was still broken. 

I was obsessed with water back then. Obsessed with potable water despite the bore hole I had in my yard. Even when I returned to the land of flushing toilets and long hot showers, I found myself preoccupied with how much I used. How often I turned it on. How other people consumed it. I constantly reminded myself of the women walking for miles in search of that most basic thing…water.

And now I find myself in California. We are in the midst of the longest drought in decades (some say back to 1850). For the most part I am a bay area stereotype (sans the restricted diet), I recycle and buy local as much as possible. When I buy organic it is usually with the farm workers in mind more than myself, and my eggs are cage and hormone free, a mutually beneficial arrangement. 

And I’m an “if its yellow let it mellow” kind of woman. Once again, TMI (too much info) I know. But old American toilets use an insane amount of water and I live alone and so I don’t see a need in sending gallons to the sewer simply because I am well hydrated. 

I’m thinking about mother earth generally. I’m thinking about California specifically.

Only I don’t…think about mother earth that is. Not always. Not when it could really count. 

Last weekend I treated myself to a fancy spa day. I craved the serene space and humid air. I wanted the warm water and time with friends. Harmless enough…

Except the sheer volume of water I used boggles my mind. As soon as I walked in I was assaulted by my own shortsightedness…my own hypocrisy of lifestyle. 

I showered to get into the bath. I lounged in the bath. I walked past the wet sauna, the air so heavy inside that it looked like a cloud outside an airplane window. 

Water water everywhere. 

Outside a much needed rain fell softly on the streets of san Francisco. I emerged from the moist comfort of my spa treatment only mildly sheepish. In my head I’m fast-forwarding my thinking to March when I can return to my favorite local spa, only marginally (if at all) less water-logged.

I haven’t reconciled my hypocrisy yet. I’m sure, given a few quiet moments I can work up a reasonable explanation for my behavior and possibly some convoluted justification for it. But really, the answer is that, as with so many other hypocrisies, I took a time out. A time out from thinking and acting in the way that I swear I believe. 

Hypocrite is a heavy moniker to wear; I hope I put it down soon.