Men of Lemmy, how old were you when you found out that bra cup sizes are not standardized in the slightest?

Clothing sizing in general is just arcane at this point.

Today years old.

It's also the fact that cup size is not necessarily independent from band size, that's where the trick is. I used to think I'm an A with a high band size as I'm huge with no booba, like a 39A or something but those never fit that well.

According to ABraThatFits methodology I'm actually 36C, which somehow does fit and super well, though by common and dudebro methodology I'm most certainly more of an "A cup" if that makes sense.

Have her go and get fitted. Many women don't know what their band/cup size really is.

Also, IMO, women's pant sizes are where the real absurdity in sizes is.

Well, today years old. Thanks.

They aren't?

There are plenty of brands that follow mostly standard sizing, as I understand it. But popular brands in the US (like Victoria Secret) generally don’t.

I fell down the r/abrathatfits rabbit hole one day, years ago. It’s fascinating.

Today years old

Oof, yeah I was about 23 and wanted to help my now wife to get some of the correct size, which was an almost impossible ordeal. Wanna hear the story? Fine:

Taking the two measures was the easy part (and doing it again during her period, because of course the size changes during the cycle, anything else would be too easy). Then I read that the cup size is the absolute difference between bust and band measurement no matter the band measurement. Furthermore since the material is elastic, for a good support, the band should be a tad below the measurement*.

So far so good, went to the store and there are only A-D cups everywhere, E if you're lucky. So basically no matter what exact measure they take between the cups, you're ok if you're thin and have small or somewhat big breasts, or you're a bit fuller and have tiny breasts. Everyone else is automatically screwed. If you're lucky enough to fall into those categories you then have to try on so many to sift through different positioning and forms of breasts until you find one that is comfortable. We had to order some all the way from the UK because it wasn't possible to get anything coming near the correct size here.

*women who wore normal cloth bras before and continued wearing the same size have felt that the elastic hasn't made things better necessarily. Can't find the source for that one right now though.

The cup size SHOULD be the difference in inches between the circumference below the breast and circumference around the breast.

3" difference would be a C cup

5" would be DD.

Why they double up some letters and not others, I couldn't tell you. 🤷🏻‍♂️

My ex used to sell underwear.

Just now.

Men's clothing sizes are a little dumb sometimes but I can usually take a tape measure to my waist and correctly order pants. Your guess is as good as mine what the difference between "boot cut" and "relaxed fit" are, and I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager. As in, I can compare a Medium I've had since the Dubya administration to an XL today. But getting fitted for a suit, they measure me in inches and the clothing is more or less sized in inches.

Women's clothing sizes have had two different ice pick lobotomies. Women come in a wider range of sizes and aspect ratios, women's clothing is pretty much universally designed to fit tighter, but on the rack they're given one meaningless size number. a 12 is bigger than a 10, who knows by how much, and there's nothing on the girl you can measure with a tape to get that number, and there is no standard here at all. Why they haven't revolted I have no idea.

It’s not that they’re not standardized, there’s a thing called sister sizes

Here https://www.sizechart.com/brasize/sistersize/index.html

Your actual size is the lowest sister size

Most of the bras that my girlfriend gets fits on her first try, although she does tend to prefer sister sizes over her real size. If your girlfriend is having issues with bras fitting, it might be worthwhile to read up on how bra sizes are actually calculated and do a measurement yourself. Funny enough, most girls don't seem to know how the bra size system works either and they just get their sizes through trial and error, which seems like what has happened here.

The letter by itself is fundamentally meaningless. A 32D is equivalent to a 34B! And most girls severely underestimate their actual size. What would colloquially be called a B or C is actually an E

When I was 25, my girlfriend complained about buying the same bra, same size, same material, same URL, from the same company, on their website, 2 years apart. The first ones fit really well, the second ones didn't fit at all.

Meanwhile, there's a shoe that I buy a pair of every few years. They release a new "version" about once per year, but the fit has been consistent, so I'm over a decade, and 6 pairs, into my purchase of them, with no problems.

Just now.

You all need to adopt metric for bras

It was a long time ago that I realized that women’s clothing sizing was largely fiction. Trying to buy clothing for a girlfriend or (later) my wife based on the tag of something they already owned was an exercise in futility.

News to me

Right now..

Right now reading the title of this post.

I never knew per se, I just assumed that like with all women's clothing sizes are a convenient fiction

Also, sometimes different colours of fabric fit differently in the same bra size.

Most women don't wear bras that fit.

Its even different in different parts of the world. Related Wiki: wikipedia-bra size

Right now

I'm both fat and tall. None of my fucking clothes have consistent sizes that fit. I'm not the least bit surprised that the clothing industry's greatest minds were defeated by breasts.

Good thing guy underwear doesn't give one fuck about the shape of the penis. They either mush it into the crutch to defeature the shlong, or they let the whole thing just flap around under loose shorts.

I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it's insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.

There shouldn't be anything preventing me from figuring out women's bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don't know them and they probably don't want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.

Right now, although I'm not at all surprised.

I'm gay, so current age I guess

Grade 9- girlfriend at the time was "blessed" so to speak. Learned e women have a much more difficult time finding bras and underwear that "work" than most men do.

They're definitely defined differently between some countries. Japanese cup sizes are different to US ones

Just now

Now but I had my suspicions considering the trend with women's clothing.

I think this is filed in my head under "no two manufacturers' sizes are the same (even if they're supposed to be to a standard)", and "this is especially true of women's wear", so while I may have known about bra cup sizes specifically at some point in the past, I'm not sure I did at the time I arrived at this post, and yet am thoroughly unsurprised to (re)discover it.

My understanding is that some European countries have laws standardizing bra size.

Well I don't wear underwear at all already 😀

This might go some ways to explaining why I've never known a woman who liked buying or wearing bras. I'm comfortable blaming the patriarchy, which can absolutely get fucked.

I cut a check when the boob owner says it's boob maintenance time. Why do I need to know anything about sizing?

The same time I learned it was like that for all women's clothing. So about 18

Probably around 14 or something. For whatever reason, people will often name DD as a large bra size around here. It also doesn't exist in our bra size system. Some girl pointed out that non-sense at school.