If clothing designers say their outfits look best while jumping off a bridge, do we do that too?

[slemslempike]

I found this site linked through Hoyden About Town.

Two further things I hated are:

1. "Our bras are designed to position the breasts halfway between the shoulder and the elbow, which is what clothing designers intended."

Yes. Definitely the solution to this problem of clothes not fitting is for bodies to fit the whims of the designers, not to encourage designers to recognise that there is no one body size and shape and maybe there could be a broader range of fits and styles.

2. "You cannot slouch in our bras."

I DO NOT WANT CLOTHES IN WHICH I CANNOT SLOUCH. I like slouching. I know it's not "attractive", (and probably makes clothing designers really mad) but that doesn't say "comfort" to me, it says "constricting".


Our windows are in. But I don't have a curtain rail anymore, something to do with the supports being too brittle. Which is fine, we can get a new one. But I don't know how to put it up and I'm worried I'll do it wrong and it will all break.

Comments

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I don't think I want my breasts to be halfway along my humerus. I think it would look rather peculiar, personally. Are leg o' mutton sleeves back, or something?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Ha - I totally hadn't thought of that before! Perhaps someone has a wart on their arm and mistaken it for a nipple and built a bra around this?

[simply-fly-away.livejournal.com]

I've just spent the last couple of minutes in front of the mirror trying to decide if my breasts are half-way between my shoulders and my elbows, and have decided that they are not, and if they were that it would look a little odd.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I have no idea whether or not mine are. I think they might be a bit higher than that, actually, but I quite like where they are. Perhaps I am woefully mislead though, and really I should be saving up for a boob job, perhaps with this.

[morganmuffle]

DO NOT WANT CLOTHES IN WHICH I CANNOT SLOUCH.

And therein lies my problem with the diea of corsets HOWEVER pretty they may be.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I know! I know everyone says they're really comfortable, actually, but oh dear me no.

[pescana.livejournal.com]

Do you remember oh, probably about ten years back when some designers used transvestites instead of women as catwalk models because the clothes fell better on their bodies? How did they fail to realize this made it even more obvious that they weren't designing clothes for women?

I pick comfort every time. Although I do think my breasts are somewhere between my shoulder and elbow - closer to the elbow, but I am not young and do not have perky breasts. Haven't, really, since I was about seventeen.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard about that! Bizarre.

I don't think I've ever had perky breasts. Mine are nice and malleable instead.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Mine were never in any way perky either. I used to get very irritable with historical novelists who went on and on about how firm their young heroines' breasts were, because mine kind of showed up in their present form over the course of about six months when I was thirteen and then stayed that way.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I kept finding descriptions in erotic literature about "perky 42 Es", which seemed highly unlikely to me.

[pescana.livejournal.com]

Only if they're silicone, which just looks really strange as far as I'm concerned. One of the aerobics teachers I had was artificially enhanced, and her boobs didn't bounce. Really, really weird.

[metamorphosa.livejournal.com]

I haven't ever had perky breasts. Not even before I had children. I like close-fitting clothes, but I would like them to enhance *my* natural shape. My pet peeve is when people wear clothes purely because they're fashionable regardless of whether they compliment their figure (whatever shape their figure may be).

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh no - I disagree with that last point! I think that the whole discourse around clothes having to compliment a figure does tie in very strongly with control over women's appearance, and people should be allowed to wear what they want without people sniffing at them. I have a friend who used to go on at me about how a pencil skirt would be "flattering" on me, but since I like a-line or flared skirts, that's what I wear, and frankly I couldn't care less if it offends someone's sensibilities over what I "should" be wearing.

[metamorphosa.livejournal.com]

You're quite right. I fail on that point in principle. In my own defense, I have never ever sniffed at anybody for their choice, and have never told anybody what they should or shouldn't wear. It's like... I look at raw form and see beauty in it, whether it be a tree, an animal, a landscape, or the many human figures. I like to be able to see that, but I'm well aware that is my own perception and that everybody else will have a different definition of beauty and also have the right to not be driven by beauty, too.

I suppose the impotus behind my statement was the comment about fashion, and how people wear things purely because they're told to even aside from the misguided belief of it being the definition of what is 'attractive'. I've a lot of time for people who actually like fashionable clothes and wear them regardless of how they look in them because then they are of their own mind, than I am for people to choose them just because.
(ETA and even that sounds wrong. I give up. This is why I normally keep all of this in my head!).

What can I say, I word things badly. It's a thing of mine.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that you were perfectly clear, and I didn't read properly because I was jumping on my own hobby-horse!

In fact I do agree with you about fashion, and that's a really good distinction between people wearing them regardless, or just because. I think I just get annoyed with fashion pages talking about rules for body types even if you don't like things, which isn't what you were doing, as I can now see!

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

That looks remarkably like an old-fashoned 'longline' bra, which I had a brief run-in with during the unenlightened 1980s. Though at least back then no one was telling me that clothing designers had the right to tell me where my breasts should be.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I am utterly baffled by the ass-less girdle that Hoyden About Town showed as well. Is my arse in the wrong place too? Are we now wearing them around our ankles>

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's some kind of 'Spank Your Cellulite Away' deal?

... seriously, I got nothin'.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Heh, that sounds a lot more fun than those knickers.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I hear the word “toxins” and reach for my gun.

Clothes designers/manufacturers do have to choose a position for the "bust point" of their basic fit, just as they choose a torso length, but this is not universal and will depend on who the garment is designed for - Topshop will use a higher point than M&S Classic Collection. But it's a silly thing to advertise a bra with, given that it is of considerably less issue to non-standard women buying clothes (only very fitted clothes) than breast size itself. The bra advert I have hated most was one in Debenhams that said a properly fitted bra increased the look of cup size as much as plastic surgery. So much Wrong!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Guns are no match for toxins! Toxins are well-known to be the most deadly of all weapons!

I do see that there has to be a point for fitted tops and the like, it's, as you say, just a silly advertising point.

But ALL women want larger breasts! ALL OF THEM/US.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I was amused by "if you don't wear a bra, your lymphatic system won't work". I mean, I know that the human body has some pretty major flaws in it (who on earth put the "intelligent" into "intelligent design"?), but I'm pretty sure that if all our bra-less ancestors suffered chronic oedema, we'd have addressed that at some point in evolution.

[owl]

My mother always says the opposite, which seems more sensible to me--if you have a band that's tight enough not to move, you'd think that it would be squashing your lymph ducts as well. Is that not why you're meant to take your bra off at night?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem a good idea to wear constricting clothing that constricts in the same place 24 hours a day simply for the sake of the skin. But trying to think about where the bits of the lymphatic system actually are, I don't think that a tight band would restrict it, because the band basically goes round the ribs, and the ribs are on the 'outside' of the body, as it were, with vessels inside them.

Ah, Google points me to some bad science - it looks like this one is an urban myth.

[pescana.livejournal.com]

But ALL women want larger breasts! ALL OF THEM/US.

I certainly don't! But then I pretty much fail at the whole 'striving to match society's standards for women' thing, so this should not be a surprise.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

If I had larger breasts then it would be even more difficult to find nice bras than it already is. And they'd get in the way. And hurt my back. And, more importantly, not be any better than the body I already have.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I'm well past the nice bra point (though from what I can tell larger bras are less of a chore to find in the UK, where presumably fewer people need them) and definitely do not want them larger.

I adore the way you dress and carry yourself. It has an artless elegance about it that doesn't just look comfortable, it encourages comfort in others.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's nice of you! It might not be everyone's idea of a compliment, but I am very happy to think that I might encourage comfort in others.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Whew! It was absolutely intended as a compliment/honest assessment.

[metamorphosa.livejournal.com]

Oh. Good. Grief! Everything you said.

In other news, I'm glad your windows are in, but that's a pain about the rail. If it's just the supports that are brittle, if you unscrew them carefully you might be able to re-use the rawl plugs that are already in the wall because those are the tricky bits. Was the curtain rail a standard track, or a fancy pole? If it was a standard track you can probably get another either the same size or an adjustable one with the same size supports.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

There is no wall around the window anymore - the old rail was screwed into the wood frame, but now that it's plastic there isn't anywhere for it to go. I'm going to go to B&Q to see if I can find something that might work, but I rather suspect that my duct-taped solution might be there for some time.

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

2. "You cannot slouch in our bras."

Thank you. No. One of the happiest days of my life was the day I discovered slouch fit jeans. I feal strongly that there should be a slouch fit everything.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I have never yet dared to try slouch fit jeans, partly because I am a creature of habit and trying new styles scares me, and partly because they sound SO GOOD, and I am worried that they won't fit right and I will never have the hope of wearing them again.