A Burden of Grief

In the past two years I have lost both of my parents to cancer. My mother battled for over 6 years while my father’s more aggressive cancer gave him just two short months. Following each of their deaths, friends and acquaintances stopped me in my daily routine to wish me condolences. It would be fine if it had stopped there, but it rarely did.

The people that approached me tended to require some sort of emotional support from me. They wanted details that I did not want to relive as I attempted to go about my day. They wanted to reminisce about my parents as I waited for my child’s bus to arrive, reminding my child of his recent loss each morning. They wanted to cry on my shoulder. They wanted hugs. They made it about them.

Shortly after my mother died, a casual acquaintance of hers found me in the laundry room. I spent twice as long doing laundry because I was too polite. She cried for half an hour, she told me that it took her 3 whole days to “truly get over it”. I didn’t need her to burden me with her grief. It all felt like a very manipulative attempt to get me to cry.

Today, as I came back into my building someone stopped me. I was wearing my father’s hat and she recognized it. She started crying. I ended up consoling her while trying to figure out a way to escape as soon as possible. She didn’t know him, she had merely seen him in the hall. Worst of all, she just hugged me without ensuring I would be comfortable first. I was not.

Most of the people that approached me didn’t even know my parent’s names. Some knew my father as the guy in the hat, some knew my mother as the woman in pink. Almost all neglected to think of how I might feel about having painful memories forced upon me as I tried to move on with my life.

I am a grieving child. I am the mother of a grieving grandchild. I am the sister of a grieving sister. I have lost some of the most important people in my life. It does not mean that I owe you any form of emotional support.

I will not allow another acquaintance to blubber as I try to get to the corner store before it closes. I will not feel bad when I walk away from the people that cannot seem to grasp that I don’t want to discuss my grief with a perfect stranger. I will not acknowledge those that tell me I shouldn’t wear my father’s hat because it makes others sad.

I have a sister. I have friends. Amazing people in my life. I trust them. They understand me. If I want to discuss anything surrounding my parents’ death, it will be with them. Please leave me alone to grieve and consider how you approach others that are grieving.

A rant.

Hello Everyone! I am back to complain! I will start with boots but who knows where I will end up!

Finding boots for someone like myself with a larger calf, can be frustrating at best. While I understand that larger boots require more material, I just can’t bring myself to believe that my only option is to turn to extremely expensive custom boots. The difference in price between custom boots and the ones my smaller friends can buy at the mall is hundreds of dollars. I did break down and buy a pair. They ran me just over $300. I can appreciate that the boots I purchased are of excellent quality but why is this my only option? I know from talking with friends that I am not the only one having issues getting reasonably priced boots.

I am tired of being expected to shell out hundreds of dollars more than my skinnier counterparts for items that most of us need. Chances are that I would not get a job if I showed up to the interview bra-less. I want my feet as dry and warm as any other person that comes from such a climate. I want clothing manufacturers to realize that people wearing a size 2 are usually a different shape than people who wear a size 12. I want my bank account to empty at the same rate as someone who is seen as having our society’s ideal body type.

While there are many things that I dislike about my body, I should not be made to feel like my money is worth less than that of someone smaller every time I go shopping for something to put on it. I have a bigger bust, bigger thighs, bigger calves, bigger arms, and, of course, a bigger bum. If the world wants to start paying us by the pound, then please continue to charge these outrageous prices. That’s not likely to happen, so instead I ask that my cost of living be the same as someone considered skinny. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, is it?

Tips to Ensure a Properly Fitted Bra

1. The wire should sit flat against your skin between the breasts. It SHOULD NOT be inches away from you, pointing outward or on your breast.

2. At the sides, the wire should point toward the back of your shoulder.  It SHOULD NOT point upward, sit on breast tissue or dig in leaving your breast spilling out.

3. The cup should hold your whole breast. You should not be spilling out at all. Check the top of the cup to make sure that your breast is not forming a bump above your bra.  Also make sure that your breast is not bouncing around loose in a cup that is too big.

4. The shoulder straps should not be what is holding your breast up. They should not be tight. They should be comfortable to give a deep shrug in.

5. The back (the band). This is a very important part and a lot of women think very little about it. Your bra should be at about the same height in the back as it is in the front. When you buy a bra you should buy it so that it fits on the loosest setting because it will stretch out over time and that will give you enough room to bring it back in to the right size when it does. It should be snug, not constricting. It SHOULD NOT ride up your back onto your shoulder blades. It SHOULD sit below them.  (This is what will be supporting your breasts, NOT your shoulder straps.)

The best thing you can do is get properly fitted.

Also be sure to wash your bras often to ensure they continue to fit you for as long as possible. Sweat erodes elastic and you can quickly find your bra giving out on you and loosening up more than you would like.

Uplifting disappointment

The other day I was shopping at Scarborough Town Center and kept noticing all these sales. La Senza had a great one on bras. Now this a point of frustration for me. Since I am a curvy girl I find that La Senza, La Vie En Rose and Victoria’s Secret are completely useless to me. These are the stores known as the “affordable lingerie shops”. Along with those are the discount and department stores including Wal-Mart, Zellers, The Bay and Sears.

So why are they useless to me?

Because I, like most women who have been properly sized, am not in that A-DD range. I fact I wear a 36G at the moment. Now, I specified properly for a good reason. A proper bra fitting is not just a measurement. I measure at a 40C. Most women do not measure their actual size. A proper fitting includes trial and error. A good bra fitter will be able to tell if something just doesn’t fit right and find the bras that will suit your body.

Now a lot of people go “OMG DD is huge!”. Society has told us that DD is the very top end of the “normal range”, that beyond DD you need to go to a specialty store and pay at least $100 because you are just too big, and those that really do fit a DD are “Plus Size women” as it usually is only available in a 38 back and up.

This is a picture of a woman with a properly fitted 34DD bust.

Not as big as you might have thought, eh?

Fact: Most women are not wearing their proper bra size.

Sadly I believe that this is due to a person’s want to be normal. I know I’m not the only one whose pride gets a little hurt when they have to go into a “plus size store”. We want to be able to pick up our bras at the same place as our friends. We want the 3 for $30 sale to apply to us too. We don’t want to have to resort to the specialty store halfway across the city and pay over $100 for a single bra. A lot of us just buy the biggest DD we can find at one of the cheaper stores and assume we just need to lose some weight to fit into them properly, but that isn’t a healthy choice.

Now we do get something better for our $100. We get quality product. In the long run that $100 bra will still look great in 5 years. It wont fall apart in 6 months to a year like the cheaper bras found in the mall. That’s like paying $20 a year for a bra. That sounds great right? Quality for the added expense? Hmmm…

During the course of 5 years you will more than likely have a change in your bra size. You may still be growing. You may have a baby. Your body may change shapes. You may develop back problems that lead to a breast reduction. Menopause may hit. You could lose weight, you could gain it.

Chances are that you will not be able to wear that expensive specialty store bra for the entire five years that you are paying for. So why should we pay so much? Sadly though the cost is necessary. You will not believe the comfort of a well fitted bra and you will more than likely be surprised at the size you are. Don’t buy a badly fitting bra just because it’s cheap and you need one. It’s actually really bad for you.

We really have no choice right now. Until women in north america start insisting that the stores in their malls get bras in their real sizes, then we will continue to see exactly what we are seeing now. If like me, cost is a problem, then look around for sales. They aren’t as good as the 3 for $30 but they can save you some money.

(I don’t know if they are running it this year, but, Secrets From Your Sister did have a valentines promotion that gave you a discount if you brought in a gently used bra for charity.)

For those of you in Toronto, there is a store called Secrets From Your Sister. They have 2 locations. One is north of Eglinton on Yonge and the other is right across the street from Honest Ed’s at Bathurst and Bloor. You can get a proper fitting there with no commitment to buy. They will of course try to sell you something and you can always make a wish list for later, but go get fitted. If you absolutely can’t, then please read the tips I have posted.

In the end we have to make a choice. As girls with curves we have to make this choice more often than we like. Do we choose to pay the same amount of money as everyone else, or do we make the choice to be comfortable?

Suggestions

This is the place to post a comment with a suggestion for discussion. I will try my best to discuss as many as possible.

An Introduction

Hello! I’m Soku, the Author of this blog!

This blog is my attempt to connect with others like me who are frustrated with all the added stresses that come with being “Curvy”. I am a girl with curves.

In the next few months I will be posting a series of posts addressing the frustrations of shopping for a curvy person. I know that this will be mostly from a woman’s point of view but I am also very interested in hearing from other points of view and look forward to seeing comments expressing them.

If there is something you’d like me to discuss here then please feel free to comment in the “Suggestions” post.

I will be glad to see any discussions that may arise from my posts, but, please keep your comments free of personal attacks of any kind. All comments found to be personally attacking anyone will be deleted a.s.a.p. Also if you feel that a comment was offensive in such a way please feel free to contact me at agirlwithcurves@gmail.com.

Thanks

Soku

A Girl With Curves