How many women out there had the Proper Bra Fitting with Mom and Grandma Rite of Passage in their teenage years?
Show of hands?
Me!
Yep. Horrifyingly enough, as a young girl my mom and Gma Smith took me down to the fancy department store Sidey’s in Dunkirk/Fredonia. And by fancy I don’t mean only department store known to us hillbillies, although it was the only one…I mean hold hands with mom and don’t break anything -but for the sticker aisle in the stationary department, fancy.
Strange older lady with a tape measure coming over to you in a large dressing room in the dark, faraway lingerie corner of the store with your mom and gma standing next to you looking in the mirror, fancy.
Ack!
I do remember this well.
Apparently my cousin Brenda went through the same thing with her mom…and Gma Baker. (I can only imagine…so sorry Bren!)
I understand the need for a proper fitting bra and all, trust me you’ve seen my girls. However, at age 12? Ok, maybe me at age 12 needed a wee bit more than an undershirt hanging past the booblets but most girls? I would think most young ladies can get away with trying on solo in the fitting room. Pick up the pretty bra with the elastic band with hearts and stripes and flowers, try it on, plop it into the shopping cart and done!
I hereby promise, if I am blessed to have a daughter…not to make her go with me to a fitting room at Victoria’s Secret to check out her real size. I of course will recommend this process for her as she gets older, but I imagine I don’t need to be there with her. And MOST DEFINITELY I would never see a reason for a grandmother to be there.
So…who else out there is with me? Abolish this Rite of Passage! Or at the very least Abolish the Three Generation Bra Fitting Rite of Passage.
Unless it is just MY family who seemed to follow this tradition? In which case, um…nevermind.
Oh hell Jen. I don’t even want to HEAR it until you go bra shopping for your GRANDMOTHER. Yup, one time when I was home and she wanted to go to the mall…. Go to Kaufmann’s…. Grams needed a new bra. She made me go in the room with her to help her. It was MORTIFYING.
Of course, now that she has been gone over a year, I would gladly, in a half-a-heart-beat, go in-the-fitting-room bra shopping with her any time she darn well wanted to.
Oh my word.
Gotta love our Gmas.
Oh Jennifer, I love you! LOL
That last remark about what you’ll do with a girl if you have her!! LOL Just wait…if you have a daughter like my Amy, not only will you be taking her for a bra fitting at 12, you’ll be buying the bras in Fredrick’s of Hollywood because it’s the only place that carries the correct size!
And just wait till you see the look on the fitter’s face in the nice department store when you explain that she’s only 12 with those 32 D’s!
Thinking back, my Nonie (my version of your Gma) was with me and Mom when I got fitted too. I was 13. I remember going to Syracuse, the big city if you lived in Oswego, to Sibley’s. Big, swanky department store that it was then, I remember being very impressed. We made a big day of it, dressed up, went to lunch. As I remember it, I thought it was great.
I kinda wish my Mom hadn’t been so far away when we had to do that with Amy. It would’ve been a wonderful bonding experience between us all acknowledging Amy becoming a woman.
And we’d still be laughing at the fitter’s face!
My own recommendation would be to abolish the bra altogether. Our country is in a funk, and this move would boost morale. In fact, as I’ve said before, I will bring such legislation to the House floor shortly after Vice-President Huckabee swears me in in January 2014.