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Summer’s Bustin’ Out All Over
Ah, the first day of summer. And, if you’re a larger-busted woman, the first day of a season not really designed with you in mind. Even if you’re not big-busted, just older, or physically odd in some way, finding attractive but modest summer clothing whose modesty doesn’t draw too much attention to itself can be tough.
High-riding bands and pit-cleavage.
There are many causes of bustiness. One is just being heavier. Others are busty even at lower BMIs, and may spend most of their lives trying to wrangle themselves into normal-size clothing, which, especially during sleeveless season can lead to unfortunate spillover effects. Many women already wear the wrong size bra, causing not only discomfort, but needless dowdiness. At least during colder seasons, a dowdy bustline is more covered up. Not so in summer, when high-riding bands and pit-cleavage can escape the confines of clothing for the world to see.
The solution may be as easy as checking to see whether you’re wearing the right size bra. Even clerks at boutique bra stores who really should know better may lowball cup size and highball band size on bustier women just to match what they have in stock. Fortunately, it’s not so hard to measure yourself at home. Bustier women who have some sewing skills may even be able to alter more commonly-available bra sizes to fit, and save some dough. I’ve done this alteration, and it works, though my seams don’t lie completely flat (the secret of the alteration is going wayyyy up in band size to give yourself room to take in).
If bra shopping is an exquisite feminine hell, swimsuit shopping may be even worse. Many of us have reasons to look for more modest swimwear, especially as we age. Not everyone is comfortable showing off their cellulite, stretch marks, or sagging flesh; nor is merely staying thin a guarantee of avoiding these blemishes: thin or fat, our body’s collagen weakens as we age (or, like me, you could just be born with congenitally weak cartilage).
Olympic-style swimsuits
Olympic athletes wear fairly full-coverage swimsuits – at a fairly full-coverage price (hundreds of dollars)! The coverage and compression of those suits can be simulated at less cost by pairing a legless racing swimsuit (I use Tyr) with a pair of men’s knee-length Speedos. For those who wish to cover their arms as well, knee-to-elbow one-pieces sold as “sun protection” swimwear, often for “surfing and snorkeling”, work well, too (there are also models that cover wrist to ankle). These solutions are highly functional, but not particularly “girly”, especially if you’d rather not turn your potatoes into pancakes, if you know what I mean.
L: elbow to knee suit; R: legless suit & Speedo
Swimwear with built-in bras is supposed to do better than squashing your chest flat. But even this is subject to pitfalls for bustier women – sometimes literal “pitfall”, if bustage escapes confinement to give you that lovely pit-cleavage. Sometimes, you get lucky, and find bra-sized swimwear that indeed matches the bra size it claims to match. Other times, there’s nothing for it but to take matters into your own hands – and I don’t mean spending your day at the beach uplifting your mammaries manually. Rather, I mean, sewing a bra that actually fits you into your swimsuit. The good news for small-banded, large-cupped women is that band size doesn’t matter for these projects, meaning you can use whichever size bra (be the band ever so huge) whose cups alone fit.
Theoretically beautiful swimdress. Frowny face indeed!
Right after I had my first kid, I wasn’t just larger-busted than I’d ever been, but also considerably heftier. That’s when I bought my first knee-to-elbow swimsuit. I also, in a sort of forlorn hope, ordered an inexpensive swimdress that at least looked good in theory. When the swimdress arrived, though, it gave me quite a frowny face. The built-in bra contained maybe a quarter of what it should have. I don’t even want to describe what it looked like: it wasn’t pretty. I was able to cut the built-in bra out and substitute one of my own – or rather, substitute a cheap bra whose band (which I didn’t need) was way too big, but whose cups actually fit. Here are some pictures of the project:
Oh, look! A halter top!
I’ve mentioned pit-cleavage a fair few times by now. One thing I’ve noticed in my various fashion misadventures is that, if you’re a woman prone to pit-cleavage, a halter top, which applies force along a strap going up and in toward the neck, rather than up and out toward the armpit, is sometimes all you need to de-cleavify those pits. Another thing: Plus-size models are still… models.
Even more robust halter top.
They might be zaftig, but they’re perky. And whatever perk nature hasn’t supplied, Photoshop can. As a sag-sack myself, even when I was a skinny teen, fuller-figured women with antigrav adipose strangely fascinate me. I remember encountering one Rubenesque young thing in a string bikini at a swimming hole once – completely flawless skin. Not a striation or dimple to be seen. It was a wonder of nature, I tell you!
But most of us will not be so blessed. As shown in the photo of my postpartum swimdress project, leggings extending below the knee are fine to swim in, too. They make special leggings for swimming, but non-swimming leggings will work if you’re OK with them wearing out fast. If you’re a swimdress sort of lady, or would be, if swimdresses covered your legs better, leggings go about as well with swimdresses as tights go with real dresses.
These days, it seems there are more options than every for less-skimpy swimwear. This is great news for those of us who love to swim, but who don’t love showing all we’ve got to all and sundry. After all, for many of us, modesty and vanity aren’t exactly opposites. What are your favorite tips for keeping cool in the summer heat without revealing too much?
Published in Humor
Just as an aside: I don’t get all the opprobrium for the burkini. There are lots and lots and lots of people whose skin I don’t want to see at the beach.
One piece swimsuits are difficult for me to find fitting. My body is size 16 and my top is size 22/24. :/ I think I’m going to go for a tankini this summer with some longer shorts. I found some tankinis that have built in support bras that look like they might work, but I’m also not above straight up wearing a bra underneath.
Exactly.
Smart idea. This style of bra, designed to bind as little as possible, isn’t terribly supportive on its own, but could be enough under a fuller-coverage swimsuit. Because of its broad, non-binding design, it doesn’t show under a swimsuit (provided its borders fit under the swimsuit, that is), or at least mine doesn’t. Swimming in a bra wears it out faster, but then, this kind of bra is also fairly cheap.
Ooh! Thank you! :) They even have my size!
My wife finds that halter top styles help to contain the girls fairly well. She also just purchased a tshirt style top that manages to have the built-in bra cups that fit. It flatters her nicely. She also has found some knee-length swimskirts with the built-in shorts as part of it as well.
My wife has been wearing tankinis with shorts for many years now, fortunately in Utah there is a good supply of providers of fairly modest swimwear given the large LDS population. Relatively few women around town wear bikinis, with the vast majority wearing modest tankinis or one-piecers
For most of my life, I’ve been a pretty aggressive swimmer, and have shied away from two-piece suits in order to avoid depantsing. Now “swimming” is more likely to mean some desultory wading and paddling while watching tots. That swimdress I altered, for example, couldn’t possibly hold up to me swimming and diving indiscriminately in it. It holds up well enough, even with my primitive sewing skills, to what I got it for, though.
I got measured recently and found that I needed to do exactly that: down a band size and up a cup size. It’s a somewhat bizarre size; the previous one was just more “normal” and easy to find. My guess is that is why women wear the wrong size.
Despite being substantially more, um, athletic-framed than women who can relate to this post, swimsuits just do not fit correctly. Halters work better, so thank you for the explanation as to why. But anything that fits through my ribcage tends to not fit elsewhere. I get two-piece swim suits with different top and bottom sizes, but even that is of limited utility: the bottoms might be designed for someone with much narrower hips, or the top doesn’t provide enough coverage, or it’s impossible to get it situated properly on me.
Oh, rash guards. When I swam/surfed in California, I found that a bikini with a rash guard was really the way to go.
I just ordered like 4 different style tankini tops and some shorts off Kohl’s. I figured I’d try them all on, keep the ones I like, then return the rest. :)
Racing suits are designed for athletic bodies, and the legless ones are affordable enough. The high cut over the hip can be bothersome – something I solved by beginning to wear shorts with them once I hit age 20 or so. Have you ever gone to a store catering to competitive swimmers and just tried on a buncha suits? I can’t guarantee you’d find something, of course.
No matter how thin I am, my body is just weird. Matching off-the-rack clothing to weird bodies is a brute-force effort.
Yeah, if I down a band size and up a cup size, I flat out won’t be able to find bras unless I special order them.
Exactly. And the less we demand our real size rather than a “normal” size, the less reason there is for shops to stock anything besides the so-called “normal” sizes.
Flat out! ;-P
If you know a place where band sizes bigger than yours are cheap and you’re willing to try your hand at an alteration more-or-less following a “sister size” chart, you might be able to find a “normal size” cup (DD or under) on a big band that matches your letter size once you take in the band to your band size.
My actual size is 40I….. :3
It seems a great number of my students (I teach high school) are eschewing bras all-together, so the problem may be short-lived.
That’s a good idea.
I think I just developed the idea that one-piece suits don’t fit me well: I am somewhat tall, have a long torso, but really do need shorter straps. The sewn-in cups tend to be about two sizes too small, and I do prefer sewn-in cups for modesty reasons not yet mentioned on this thread.
A lot of department-store one-pieces also have the low backs, and I don’t like worrying about the straps slipping off my shoulders.
But hey, swimmers tend to be tall, right?
I’d imagine that you’d be able to find long torso, short straps in a one-piece athletic swimsuit. At least, the free-marketer in me hopes so…
Not mine… but pretty and it looks absurdly comfy.
And long-torsoed.
When it comes to supporting women’s breasts I am your right-hand man. And if forced to, I will also use both hands.
Whoa, says you. Let’s nip this line of conversation right now. How can I when every October and Mother’s Day both the National Football League and Major League Baseball respectively tell me it is my manly duty, nay, my civic duty to be “aware” of women’s breasts? I say that’s a full time duty and I intend to embrace it.
In the words of Omar Khayyam, “Come, fill the cup…”
(Be sure to follow this conversation to stay abreast of further, er… developments.)
I suspect vanity + gravity will get most of them in the end.
For their sake, hopefully the former before the latterly. Reverse order would be unfortunate.
So the women who frequent the PIT are either well-endowed, models, actresses, or, um, half marathoners.
Or all 4 things combined?
I’m not even close to all 4 things combined.
don’t ruin the dream Julie…
Among racing swimsuits, some seem to have much more robust lining than others. Depending on the modesty concern in question, a really heavy, compressive lining, like on some Tyr suits (the lining seems no thinner than the outer fabric), might conceal more than a department-store swimsuit with “cups” would, in addition to having a higher neck and back line.
Among non-racing suits, this strategy for concealing chestal asymmetries really stands out:
Wear a suit so ill-constructed, even a model looks lopsided in it. Look how happy she is!
She knows exactly what’s going on.