Lifts and Separates - Me and The Girls (5/24/07)

   For those of you old enough to remember, "lifts and separates" was the main brassiere ad when I was coming up.  I believe it was for the "Playtex 18 Hour Bra".   Jeez - It was like  body armor and looked like Madonna's dominatrix cone bra.  Its claim to fame, was, alas - its ability to lift, and then to separate. In the TV ad, they had some busty babe all strapped into the thing, and she criss-crossed her heart (another slogan) with a measuring tape ( ? ).  As a kid, I couldn't wrap my mind around any body part requiring "lifting and separating".   WTF ?  And, is there a single article of clothing that I would wear for 18 hours straight ?  If I keep shoes on for more than 45 seconds after entering the house, I break out into a rash...
     If asked (and I realize that I wasn't) I would say that 2 things come to mind as being instruments of the devil and/or tools of the oppressor .  Sprinkle in a little misogyny, and you've got yourself high heels and bras.  Seriously. A bunch of men sit around, and say "ooh - this looks insanely tortuous - let's sell it to the gals !"
    Now, I basically have been wearing the "sports bra" stuff since I had kids - after a brief and odd dalliance with the "nursing bra".  Tank tops, camis, anything but a "bra".  My old size in my 20's was something mind-boggling like a 34AA.  I had little colorful, clip-in-front binders called "Sweet Nothings" (how dare they !) - and they were a cool $5 a pop.  No harm, no foul.
     Then, 2 wild pregnancies in 2 years, 50 pounds with each kid and then you are feeding someone off of your actual "body" for years (okay, Missy for 11 months and Sparky (drumroll please) for 3 years).  And then, frankly, who gives a flying fuck if you're wearing a bra when you are wrassling 2 toddlers all day and dressing yourself in the closest thing on the bedroom floor with the least stains.  (Oh. My. God.  I just realized that only difference now is that I am wrassling teenagers.  My face be red.)
    So, Sparky asks me a while  back : "So, how come we don't wear bras, Mom ?"  I stared at her, thinking : "How the hell should I know ?"  Then, I realized that these teenaged gals is wearing camis and stretchies and anything but a bra !  Oops.  My daughter, myself - right ?  Egads, no !  I'd like to mess them up in some different way, I think, than trying to make them just like me.  Eew.
     So I take Missy out binder-shopping.  Good mom.   3 adorable little binders - cheap and colorful.  A few weeks later, Sparky's turn : not little, not colorful; - but "grown up bras" that I know NOTHING about.  Bad mom.  I felt like a fecking nun.  The time had come for me to take back the boobs.  (Plus, I notice that my profile is starting to look a bit like Alfred Hitchcock's , if you get my drift...)
      So I see a bra fitting at Macy's, and a pal and I and her 2 babies run out there to have strange women palpate our dirtypillows.  I am apprehensive, at best.  Do I get drunk first ?  Do I nurse the fitter ?  I  SO don't have a blueprint for this.  So, some skeletal 19 year old chippie whisks me into a dressing room.  As we sashay behind what I now refer to as "The Pink Curtain", I try to bond and let "Mitzi" know that I have not worn a bra in over 125 years.  I figure that she will be gentle with me, having this foreknowledge.  She calls out to me as I follow her :  " Ooh !  We gotta give the girls a little support !"
     Naive, artless, don't get out much - I  am feeling empowered now, like a woman.  Like a womyn.
Im'a buy me a REAL bra like other girls and wimmins.  I figure that Mitzi is talking about supporting girls in general : whether by taking back the night or breast cancer or equal pay for equal work or Rosie the Riveter...I'm on board.  Bras.
     For the love of the risen, risen Christ : the "girls" she was referring to were....my breasts.  This junior slattern actually felt as if it were somehow appropriate to refer to my bustline as "girls".  Speechless, I made a snap decision to roll with it, in all of its absurdity.  Come on, Girls - don't be lollygagging behind - we gon' buy you some new clothes !
      Mitzi ushers me into a divine dressing chamber, and urges me to slip into a lush pink robe (with the breast cancer, again).  I inform her that I can only do that if she escorts me to home furnishings for a quick 2 hour nap.  She titters (pun sort of intended).  I'm dead serious.  (Sparky and I Googled earlier, and she measured me, only to tell me I was a "size zero.")  Mitzi arrived at a slightly different number, and sailed out onto the floor for some clothes for The Girls.  I shouted behind her : "I want black and red and none of that old lady stuff !"   (Meanwhile, my friend's 2 year old is crawling under the door, saying : "Trudy Sanders, an are you getting dressed?"  Well, yes and no...
      The Mitz returns with a score of what seem to be large widths of Ace bandaging with complicated trussing systems and enough wire to set off any airport alarm system.   The Girls and I were taken aback, thinking : "Is this what it is for me now, Mitzi ?  I had little cupcakey 34 AA's and then I grew up and lactating and fat and now I have putty-colored harnesses to choose from ?"  She made some offhand comment re: "our" bodies changing as :"we" grew older.  I then slapped her - hard - stating that she knew nothing about "aging" or "anything over a size 2".  The Girls and I were mad now, and feeling mean and snarky.
   Mitzi then spake of such things as "back fat" (rub it in, you tiny bitch), "spa strapping" and "load those Girls into those cups, Trudy  !"  I strapped, I loaded (Jesus - is this an Uzi or a fecking piece of
lingerie ??)  I popped up then, perkily, I might add, and she exclaimed  : "Ooh !  There's that cleavage !" Hearing my friend giggling in the "salon" net to me didn't help....fuck me bald.
    So, 4 binders later (all Silly Putty beige - shike!) and I am bra-d.  And unhappy.  Sure, The Girls stand up and I load them every morning and I snap and fuss with things like "straps" and "hooks".  There is a modicum of distinction between my belly and The Girls now.  BFD.
    Frankly, I whine and fuss the whole time I am trussed and/or trussing - I feel like I'm Miss Scarlett in GWTW getting squished into her corset.   I can't breathe.  Each time I bra up, I am know to shout "....Miss Skah-lett, I don' know nothin' 'bout birthing no babies !"   I wheeze and gasp and threaten emphysema and throw myself around and launch into multiple tirades about women in the rainforest and men with tits and then everyone stops listening to me.  I HATE my new bras, and they hate me.  The Girls, while getting loaded every morning, long for the ease and comfort of a nice silk cami or a cottony bra-lette.  If I stand very still, I can hear them saying, ever so quietly - ".....why....why..."
        Why indeed.  I still don't know.     Maybe my breasts are actually boys...