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Comment by KMnO4 | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t the calculator you’re looking for! This is:

https://www.abrathatfits.org/calculator.php

The biggest problem is that bra sizes are a measurement of volume, not just circumference. Stores will typically use a formula that lumps you into similar “sister sizes” so they don’t have to carry as many sizes. For example, a 32DD is very similar to a 40A, so most stores don’t carry 40 and push everyone towards 32.

Which is the same as going to a restaurant which gives you soup in a tall glass because it holds nearly as much soup as a bowl.

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After my cancer treatment (well, during, really) and 75% resection of my liver I developed severe gynecomastia that couldn't be surgically addressed. It was embarrassing and uncomfortable. The residents of the reddit /r/abrathatfits[1] group were very helpful in helping me find a solution to fit me (now at a 44DD). There are a lot of variables though, and even within a brand two different styles will fit very differently. The fitters on the reddit site had the experience to know how to steer me. See also: bratabase.com[2]

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/abrathatfits

[2] https://www.bratabase.com

Yup, r/abrathatfits and the associated calculator are by far the best online resource when it comes to sizing and fitting bras. And as you noticed, they are very inclusive too.

It doesn't help that I think most women would prefer (or perhaps think most men would prefer) that their bra says 32DD instead of 40A. Especially since lots of people get sized when they're in their teens and don't adjust until it becomes really problematic.

I don't think most women, certainly not the ones with big boobs, not in my experience anyway.

Recalling my junior high and high school days, it absolutely came up a lot - and was definitely internalized young.

But sure, the women with very large breasts are probably far more concerned with not being painfully uncomfortable constantly.

Not sure how representative high school is for the rest of life in these kind of areas.

In general, it's my experience that some (maybe even many?) women are far more concerned about these sort of things than men are, just many men are insecure/worried about penis size, but women in general don't actually care all that much (in both cases, some do, but the majority don't).

It varies by age. Women in their 20s and 30s don't care that much. Teens and preteens are awkward.

Gen X women are not okay with their bodies. I feel bad.

Boomer and Silent Generation women are either very gracious and don't care OR are very mad that 80-something boobs, shoulders, and bodies don't work like 20-something boobs, shoulders, and bodies.

(I work as a bra fitter, so take this with a grain of salt as my information is going to be limited to a single geographical location.)

I guess age plays a big part? In my teens I was very insecure and awkward, too. Now in my late 30s: whatever, I don't care. But then last summer I noticed my hair is thinning and I'll probably be bald or balding in n years, and I was surprised how much this worries me :-/

Age and how it relates to life experience. I imagine the teen awkwardness will persist for a long time (although I'm unsure, some of the girls [plus some of the middle/high school teachers I've fit] specifically talk about the reactions of boys around them and our idea of acceptable male adolescent behavior is changing rapidly).

I was talking with my coworker about this today actually: Gen X women are in an uncomfortable position of being raised in an era of mass media and unattainable ideals without the ability to talk to one another openly and anonymously that Millennials/Gen Z/Alpha have. For example, Gen X women are (generally) way more concerned about the fat squeezing out of their bra bands than Millennial or Zoomer women even though they all have it. Likewise, most of the 'oh I can't be X size because it's 'vulgar'/'I have to minimize'/'I have to be a certain shape' comes from Gen X and older. There are very clear social messages which have changed with generation that are fascinating to watch. This is even more pronounced in the language/approach our male customers have. The older crossdressers or trans women are way different than our younger ones.

Boomers and older genuinely aren't dealing well with their aging when it comes to things like mobility, medical conditions, etc. For example, front closure bras are really useful for older women who have lost shoulder/arm mobility but there are physics trade-offs that have to be made. Likewise, a lot of them can't stand the pressure that's needed for a good fitting wired bra as their muscles/bones/etc. are less resilient so they need wirefree options but can't accept that it means they will not get the shape they're used to. I just want to grab them by their fragile boned shoulders and shake them. You're 75! It's okay! Nobody cares if you don't have the breast shape under clothes of a 22 year old!

I hope this does get better as we age. Watching older women hate themselves is so sad.

>our idea of acceptable male adolescent behavior is changing rapidly

How?

I'm 34 and just in my lifetime it's become way less acceptable for men to comment on women's bodies and in schools there's been a complete flip from 'don't dress like that, you'll distract the boys' to the focus being on that the boys shouldn't care and should still behave. (To an extreme, I think. Expecting adult men to have that level of self-control is fine, but a 12 year old boy is kind of new to 'everything make peepee hard' so maybe cut them a little slack.)

Essentially, existing as an obvious female is no longer seen as an acceptable reason to sexualize them.

I'm sure the boys will still do it because part of being an adolescent is doing what adults tell you not to, but the girls might get less horrified by their breasts if the adults around them view comments on them poorly/support them.

I think you overestimate how many women care about the letter associated with their cup size. And how many men even know their partner’s cup size. Yes, many women are self-conscious about their breast size but cup size isn’t analogous to “penis length” where the literal number matters. Like it’s kind of an in-joke among women that “double d’s” aren’t actually all that large despite being what men associate with “big boobs.” It’s always a fun time asking all the boyfriends to guess cup sizes, my friend who has boobs so large she’s considered reduction for spine health alone always gets DD when she’s actually an H.

Vanity sizing absolutely is a thing but bra size is somewhat immune to it because getting it wrong means pain and discomfort.

Well, as is being discussed, the band size matters a lot when discussing cup sizes.

A 36DD is pretty large, a 28DD is not in absolute terms. But in terms of appearance, a true 28DD will look quite large on a small frame.

I would bet a lot of money that many folks would prefer to think of themselves as a 34B vs a 36A for both reasons - you might feel like you're more ideally proportioned with a smaller band size and you have a bigger cup size to boot.

> A 36DD is pretty large, a 28DD is not in absolute terms. But in terms of appearance, a true 28DD will look quite large on a small frame.

Nope. 36DD isn't really that large, and a 28DD doesn't look very large at all even accounting for the small frame. I'm a bra fitter at a specialty boutique (I also do their IT - my life is weird) and I see a lot of breasts. I'm also personally a 28GG/H and most people would consider me on the larger size of average; nobody would consider me 'large chested'. A 28DD is still going to look tiny. They just probably think they're a 34A, but in general at that size women who are fed up with bras just stop wearing them.

My wife's best friend in the Navy was in that exact situation. THe Navy luckily approved her request for a breast reduction surgery. But she was an H-cup prior to pregnancy. Her and her husband decided to have a kid, she got pregnant, breasts grew more and listening to her and my wife talk about it, I really felt for her. It sounds really painful. And it is also expensive when breasts are that large and you have to go to specialty boutiques.

>> It doesn't help that I think most women would prefer (or perhaps think most men would prefer) that their bra says 32DD instead of 40A.

> I think you overestimate how many women care about the letter associated with their cup size.

I would have thought women cared at least as much about the circumference number. That's what they worry about in every other item of clothing; that's why the same clothes are a smaller size at high-priced stores than they are at low-priced stores. The letter is a measurement of whether you have a flat chest, but the number is a measurement of whether you're fat!

The band size is essentially the circumference of your rib cage, which, sure, can change if you're severely overweight, but generally isn't nearly as affected by weight gain as, say, your waist measurement.

It's also not practical to fit into a size 32 if one's true band size is 40, any more than someone with a 40 inch waist can wear size 32 pants.

You can go the other way more easily and in my understanding/experience that's typically what happens (i.e. someone who's true size is 32DD wearing a 40A due to a limited set of options available in many brick-and-mortar stores).

Picture trying to fit an orange into a cup that's too small — there will be space between the orange and the cup, which could make it seem like the cup is too big. If you can't get a cup that's big enough for the orange to fit in, a flat plate (i.e. 40A) is the second-best option since at least it won't have weird gaps. This leads to women underestimating their true cup size.

> Picture trying to fit an orange into a cup that's too small — there will be space between the orange and the cup, which could make it seem like the cup is too big.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, but it seems like that space between the orange and the too-small cup depends on the orange being rigid, and the analogy runs into trouble there.

Breast tissue varies wildly in terms of density and mold-ability. Breast tissue can absolutely fight a bra and win slash refuse to conform.

Something that seems to be lost in the differences between "horny men craving the DD's" and "women figuring out a practical dress" is the fashion statement made with particular styles of bra, size vs shape preferences, and the relationship of bras to other cosmetic treatments. It's quite a sociological rabbit hole.

In the midcentury the cone or "bullet bra" was really in vogue. Besides lifting the profile to an unnaturally perky shape, it did succeed at providing comfort. It was high tech fashion, for the time. But this look was unmistakably of an era. From the 60's on, perceptually natural shapes became more popular. And this trend towards a natural look probably wasn't just an isolated cultural trend or down to technical changes in bras themselves, since it came along with the growing popularity of surgical breast implants; implants disguise themselves much better.

And yet, sometimes one will come across horny art where naked women are drawn with an unnatural, torpedo shaped bust, as if they were wearing an invisible bullet bra. Is it simple ignorance of the difference? Is it the artist projecting the shape they want onto the figure? This kind of art, being a private fantasy, suggests thoughts that ordinarily wouldn't be spoken.

These questions occur rather independent of the actual size of a natural bustline. It could easily be the case that more men enjoy pointy chests and don't have the background needed to ask for it, so they ask for "large" instead, but are in turn influenced by media into a form of "large" that is unbelievable(much as how standards for muscularity and fitness have become driven by drug usage, and so imagery of "powerful" characters in fiction now often tends towards monstrous cartoon proportions and near-fainting leanness). And on the woman's side, there's a question of "do I want to stand out" that leads towards staying within the trend of natural, and therefore towards considering surgical enhancements that disguise the true intent.

Meanwhile, practical matters of naturally large chests are clouded by all of this. The bell curves of physique are certainly full of unwanted remarks and suppositions.

Sounds like those men didn't do their Due Diligence

I've only ever seen breast size insecurity with young teenagers or japanese RPGs. I'm pretty sure most women could be happy with a bra size of Π as long as it fits and isn't exorbitantly expensive.

I work as a bra fitter and ironically what you see is actually usually the opposite: Women aren't comfortable with their cup size because they think it's 'too big'. This is usually mid size women (like 32F - 38DD/E); women with a substantial amount of tissue usually are just happy with anything that actually fits.

Why do you think that is, generally speaking? Do they feel like large breasts garner unwanted attention, or is it something that isn’t even on the radar?

It's a combination of three things:

1.) Not wanting to be 'fat'.

2.) What you said, where they don't want the unwanted attention. In the case of women who are over 40, a lot of them also lived most of their lives in a culture where a woman with large breasts was considered to be 'asking' to be sexualized. Books, TV, movies, etc. In addition, if they're from more conservative communities there's a focus on not 'tempting' men and the knowledge that if they're harassed their communities will just be like 'well you didn't hide that you have large breasts well enough, of course that happened.'

3.) A desire to be 'normal'. This group calms down when I mention that the current sizes that are carried in most stores were determined back in the 60s-70s and that their size is normal, the major American companies just like to coast on bad and outdated data. (Because why change if people still buy them?)

Since you often can't return a product that has been worn next to human skin perhaps the companies selling bras have realized that being able to sell more bras until a person figures out the right size is profit? Just one example of where obfuscating size/quantity/other_parameters is used for profit. For example, a "2x4" is actually 1+1/2 inches by 3+1/2 inches? This has been going on since the time of the Egyptians when you had to bring your own scale to the market to weigh goods, and watch out for the thumb on the scale.

I found /r/abrathatfits through a acquaintance's blog about a decade ago and this calculator made a huge difference in my life. I did not know that bras could actually be comfortable and supportive.

I found ABTF...back when I was a 26 band size. At least I understood why I could never be happy.

Very glad I'm 30 pounds heavier now and can wear a 28 or even 30(!) band...

I thought I had it rough with a 28 band (since so many bras start at 30), I can imagine the difficulty of a 26.

Yeah, I resorted to custom ordering Ewa Michalaks (which sucked because at least back in 2012/2013 their QC was awful) or just tailoring the bands. I have no depth perception, so you can guess how good I am at sewing. (Hint: I am terrible at it.)

Edit: Oh, but Comexim is a decent option if you're a 26. They do custom sizes like EM, but their QC is much better.

I had started looking into some of the Polish companies but luckily I found that one of the most popular Panache bras fit me well.

Also I also have no depth perception and am terrible at sewing, I never made the connection between the two.

Comexim is the only brand I've found that's close-set enough for me, but I usually do wear Panache bras. My Ava and Roche are in very heavy rotation, and even if the gore on Claras stab me, they're so pretty...

I love that I can do complex math, speak multiple languages, etc. but ask me to thread a needle and I'm like 'that'll take an hour you better sit down'.

off-topic but I'm a fan of your user name. Potassium Permanganate will always remind me of the delight on Martin Poliakoff's face in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLUyeCC-2Ko

Very cool: thank you.

Thanks, you’re the first person to mention my username :D

And thanks for reminding me of that; I always enjoy watching Martyn’s videos.

How on earth do you wear a 32 inch band with a 40 inch underbust? I mean... maybe we can't all tell perfect fit between a 38 and a 40, but if somebody is tightening a vise around your underbust, how do you miss that?

And yes, abrathatfits is probably the best calculator out there. But my mind still boggles at the claim that stores push a 32 on you when you're a 40. I'd expect a place like that to lose customers like a leaky bucket.

Yes the failure mode that happens in practice is a band that's too big and a cup that's too small.

Seconding this.

That calculator, and r/ABraThatFits[1] are your friend, if you need them -- nothing else compares.

Even supposed "experts" in stores can massively misjudge or incorrectly size you. Measure yourself, you might be surprised!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ABraThatFits/

Thanks so much for posting this! https://www.reddit.com/r/ABraThatFits/comments/rh26h/comment... was a life-changer. Happy to see it codified with a calculator.

I was familiar with that sub but totally missed this calculator. That's fucking amazing! Thanks for sharing.

Was hoping for a DL based calculator that requires only photographic input.

as Frank Zappa sang; anything over a mouthfull is wasted.

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