Every once in awhile we come across a news item or factoid that stops us in our tracks, eliciting something like, “Aye yi yi!” The latest one of these starts off . . .
According to a national fit study by Wacoal, eight out of ten women in the U.S. — or nearly 90 million women over the age of 18 — are wearing the wrong size bra. The Wacoal study, conducted among 750 women, also reveals that the most common mistake made by women is wearing a bra in which the band is too big and the cups too small, with an estimated 35 million women making this mistake alone.
Having a background of zero experience in this, we’ll observe that, if true, something better be done. It must be awfully uncomfortable — and may explain some of the irritability to be seen at times in members of the fairer sex.
This item provides yet another eye opener. According to Liz Smith, Wacoal’s retail services director, “There is a stigma about wearing larger cup sizes, so women are reluctant to wear what truly fits their body.”
That seems strangely at odds with the escalating popularity of surgical breast enlargement, but we’ll take her word for it.
The remedy Wacoal suggests, by the way, is for women to go to one of the more than 1,000 stores nationwide where one of the fitters the company has trained can help women buy a bra that’s just right. The fittings are free.
So, for our female readers, this may be news you can use. For the rest it’s a factoid that can provide an alternative to making small talk about the weather and how high gas prices are.
Unfortunate and uncomfortable perhaps, but not truly surprising. Imagine if condoms came in sizes: “Will the gentleman be requiring tiny, small, medium, large, or — ahem — Magnum?” How many men would buy the appropriate size? How long before manufacturers adjusted the sizes, thus echoing something I once overheard at a McDonald’s, clarification from an order taker: “Ma’am, our large is actually a medium.” (Or was it vice versa?)
McDonald’s? A couple of recent visits have me convinced that if they continue shrinking portions at the current rate, in about two years the breakfast biscuit will be dwarfed by a Ritz cracker. A regular so-called hamburger will be so thin they’ll have to apply it to the mini bun in paste form and just sear it a little.
I expect any time now to hear, “You want a fry with that?”
You want that fry biggie sized?
Oddly, portions do seem to shrink; perhaps it’s McDonald’s nod to nouveau cuisine (i.e., “pretty portions”)?
On the other hand, drink sizes for the past several decades have been increasing. Remember the jingle (which I heard in “vintage” recordings) for Pepsi: “…5 full ounces, that’s a lot!”? Nowadays, 12-ounce cans are small, and 32-ounce cups are no longer the largest. Whence this incredible escalation? Have Americans really gotten so much thirstier?
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote an amusing essay (collected in one of his books) about the incredible shrinking Hershey bar. He observed that, over time, the bar got smaller yet cost more. He extrapolated and discovered that the bar would shrink out of sight in the near future (I don’t remember the year off hand) and would cost just under a dollar when it vanished.
Mcdonalds uses its own soft drinks and not Pepsi or Coke.
Its a big profit maker. They dont want to sell small cups
of soda. Thats a money loser and it attracts small kids
who dont buy food but just want a drink. The other fast
food places are all like this too.
An old joke here:
Gorbachev calls Reagan, says they are running
out of condoms in the USSR, and asks if Reagan
can get someone to ship a batch over.
Reagan says no problem, he’ll have three
boatloads over next week. Gorbachev says
they will have to be special orders because
of the extra large endowment of Russian
men, and then gives the size needed.
Reagan calls Trojan corp., gives them the
order, and tells them “when you get done,
stamp them all ‘medium size’”.
OK, RSF, that’s pretty good. Thanks for the chuckle.