I confess I am posting this because I need to rant, and I am certainly shocked, although the connection with culture shock here is flimsy at best.
Yesterday I commited a stupid mistake: I went to an underwear shop that specialises in fashionable, cheap, very colourful and almost never "sexy" stuff. There are at least three different chains in Spain that do exactly that, and the shops are appearing like mushrooms after a rainy night. The thing is, I don't understand who buys in them. Who can fit into their bras? Certainly not me.
Let's see. For the information of readers who do not use bras, this is what you need to know: a bra size has a number, which means circumference in centimetres (in Spain) or inches (in the UK and USA), and a letter, which means how big the breasts are. A is almost flat, the average woman uses a B, and so on.
First bra I see that I really like: cups A or B. Sizes: 70 to 85 (that is 28 to 34). Look here. The skinniest of East Europe supermodels are a size 85 (34). When I was twelve years old I had a 80. Who needs a 70 size bra? I'm not asking the right question. Who in bloody burning hell needs a 26/28 size bra? Seriously?
There was more fun awaiting me. I tried on bras of three different sizes and cups. It turned out that all sizes were too small: the back was more or less always the same, and the only front was wider and wider. It is as if the people who designed them forgot that bigger breasts tend to come attached to wider chests and stronger ribcages.
It is also as if we lived in a world in which suits came in assorted lenghts for taller or short men, but always with the same wide shoulders and narrow waist, to fit athletes. Or as if male underwear came with different sizes for genitals of different sizes, but with the back made to fit _only_ tight little buttocks. There are days in which, if I could ask for one wish only, I'd ask that the quality/pricing/sizes of clothes for men followed the tendencies of clothes for women and viceversa.
.