Opinion

Anita Robinson: Support group sought for uplifting experience

After a long search, Anita Robinson has found The One
After a long search, Anita Robinson has found The One After a long search, Anita Robinson has found The One

LOOK away gentlemen. This is not for you...

Hello girls. Intimate matters on the agenda this week. Just tear this article out of your Irish News and let the Significant Other content himself with my bosom buddy on the opposite page who is in rattling good form today.

My subject this week is a delicate but uplifting one. In the guise of your upper torso correspondent, I ask: "Ladies, do you have a drawerful of bras bought in hope, worn in discomfort and abandoned in despair?"

Thought so. Eighty-five per cent of women are wearing the wrong size.

This is the result of a combination of factors, viz seduced by style over substance, buying 'because it's so pretty', the irritating fact that every lingerie brand seems to have its own sizing policy and our curiously faux-modest reluctance to be measured by a trained fitter who will not recoil in horror from the much-washed, faintly greying, but oh-so-comfy model you're wearing, trusting that today's not the day you get knocked down by a bus.

You wouldn't buy a dress that doesn't fit in the right places, would you? Or shoes? Though in the case of footwear, I confess to settling for a vague approximation.

There can be nothing approximate about feminine underwear. Get the foundation right and shape, definition, security, comfort and fabulousness will invariably follow.

Today underwear has come out of the closet and frequently masquerades as outerwear. Some would have more on them in a hang-gliding harness.

Looking at the degree of semi-nudity one sees as a matter of course in a single evening's television, I wonder what Auntie Mollie would have made of Love Island and its ilk.

To her, any neckline lower than the clavicle was shockingly immodest. She was given to cryptic utterances such as, "Don't put all your goods in the shop window."

The nuns at my convent grammar school were of like mind. We barely-adolescent fourth formers were cast in an historical play.

Tudor-style dresses were hired at great expense from Mutrie's Theatrical Costumiers in Edinburgh, authentic in every detail - rich, dark brocades and sweeping velvets with low, square necklines - which the nuns filled in with blindingly white linen dinner napkins, lest we scandalised the bishop.

Came the day I was taken by my mother to a proper corsetiere to be fitted with my first bra.

Imagine the agony of the budding adolescent taken behind the beige curtain, the embarrassing removal of outer garments, the touch of the tape measure like clammy linoleum upon shrinking flesh.

A number of, shall we say, 'servicable-looking' models are produced and - oh horror - one is personally assisted into them.

Harness fastened, there is some gentle tuition in 'adjustment technique'.

This involves leaning well forward whilst performing a discreet ladling motion, rather like serving soup carefully into shallow bowls.

The whole thing is a mortification from start to finish.

I was more excited by the Littlewoods chain store offering, with circle-stitched cups like two ice-cream cones stuck to one's chest.

Very impressive, until somebody collided with you and dented one of your assets.

When Etam's opened in Belfast, it caused a youth sensation. Legend had it 'ETAM' stood for Everything To Attract Men.

My four student flatmates and I - each of varying height, weight and vital statistics - bought identical sets of pink gingham bra and pants trimmed with broderie anglaise, à la Brigitte Bardot.

Naturally, they got mixed up in the communal wash, so the earliest riser picked the nearest and driest regardless of ownership.

When they got shabby, we plunged the lot into a big soup saucepan and dyed them forest green.

Somewhat daringly I bought a 'balconette' bra which hoiked everything up, creating an alarming resemblance to the cinema's ice-cream lady with her tray. I never brought it home.

Thus began my lifelong search for 'the one'. Decades and drawersful of lacy disasters later, I've found it - a famous firm where the fitters are reputedly so skilled they can gauge your bra size accurately with your coat on.

It's... Oops - I've run out of space...