I have this fantastic memory of bra shopping with my little sister in 2002. I was 26, she would have been 15, she was staying with me for a week during the summer, and I'm sure there were a few things she would rather have been doing than accompanying her big sister to a Maidenform outlet to suit up her rather unmaidenly, pregnant DDs.
I had previously been one of the five kajillion women about whom Oprah is deeply concerned because they're wearing the wrong bra size. I was convinced, like so many other women, that I wore a bigger band and a smaller cup, and keeping me in my ignorance was the wide variety of cute, colorful underthings available to those who don't need (or don't think they need) a triple-hook in back. This time, though, amplified by my delicate condition as I was, there was no denying that I was skipping the lavender and polka-dots and heading straight to the section that resembled body armor for Brunhilde more than anything else. And apparently, Hildie is a practical gal with no interest in frilly eye candy.
Finally, I found a couple of almost-attractive brassieres (you cannot call something that solidly functional a mere bra): one pinkish beige contraption with a not-too-frumpy lace overlay, and a darker pinkish beige rendition of the same. I swallowed my pride, talked up the embellishments in my head, convinced myself they were cute, and headed to the register.
My sister intercepted me.
"Ew," quoth teenaged she with utmost eloquence and tact, continuing: "they look like something grandma would wear."
And so, dear readers, I spent the next several months of my first pregnancy wearing undergarments that resembled my grandmother's. And lo, these many years since, not a brassiere-shopping excursion goes by during which I do not hearken back to those insightful words of my younger sister, and meditating upon them, pass up the body armor, in the hopes of finding something a little more colorful and a little less valkyrian.
