Your bra's best-before date...

I'm needing some lift and separation folks.  What with my apparently swelling mammary glands - I'm finding that my standard bras don't seem to be doing the shaping that they ought.  The cups are a little wonky, the band is stretched...

I can't remember the last time I bought a real bra.  You know,  a bra that wasn't supposed to stay on only until David got hard.  A bra that you get on sale at Victoria's Secret or La Senza... the  balconette bras with matching cheekini - the '15 seconds until naked' bras, the 'va-va-va-VOOM' bras, the 'giving your partner the opportunity to motorboat you' bras.  I've got at least a dozen of those bras. 

But those bras have nothing to do with the type of  bras that actually offer true support to your girls.  The bras that Jane Russell and Sophia Loren wore under their clothes.  I need one of those bras.  The t-shirt bras are all well and good, they sure as shit mask those pesky nipples, but they don't really shape the breasts. They do not give me the shape that I really want underneath my clothes.  I want two distinct breasts - both level and pointing straight ahead, with no added back fat.

How much is that gonna run me?  What do I have to lay out in 2014 for that kind of bra?  The last time I bought a chi-chi, properly fitted, read-about-it-in-a-magazine, where the sales clerk comes into the change room with you and gets up close and personal, bra was probably five years ago.  I know it was well over  $100.00.  If I'm spending over $100 on a piece of clothing, I still want to be wearing it in five years' time, don't you?  I don't even know where that bra is any more.  Even if it no longer fits me, I should, at the very  least, have it framed in a shadow box for posterity.  

"That... That is my ESB.  European Shaping Bra.  The girls never looked as good as they did in her.  And to your right, you'll find..."

Gearing up for a bra expedition is akin to going to war.   Nobody ever re-measures before they go.  You can get the gals as Victoria's Secret (all touted as bra experts) to wrap you in their measuring tape, but they will never be as good as that little old Italian woman who's been in the bra industry for 50 years and who can look at your tatas and instantly know that you are not the D cup you thought, but instead an F.  "NO!  No, you don't want that!  You want this!"  And then she holds out something so un-pleasing to the eye, so industrial in style that you could be filming a niche-market porn film.  But you are terrified of displeasing Tia Rosa, so you slink into the changing room and put it on...  It still looks awful.  "Put on your top!!" she orders.  Cowed, you do.

You come out... your girls are... perfect.  They are up and out - when you turn, the bra's band hasn't dissected your back fat into above and below... an angels' chorus sounds, a divine light envelopes you... And all you have to do to achieve this, is to throw everything you think you know about your sizing out the window and not be defined by the number you thought you were.  Does it fit?  Do you have two equally sized, upright breasts?  Then you're good to go.  It doesn't matter if five years ago you were a 34 DD.  Now you are a 38 C, or a 42 F - or whatever the number and letters are - if you're wearing the right size, I can guaran-freaking-tee you that you'll feel better about yourself.    From my mouth to Tia Rosa's ears...