By SUSAN REINHARDT
Asbury Park
Press

I think I was 30 when I got mine. My milk had come in. I was the size of a wet nurse. A heifer with dragging udders fastened in the stanchion.

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration.

Perhaps not.


There really wasn’t much need for a bra in my wardrobe until children popped. Nowadays, kids develop much sooner because the milk supply and chickens are teeming with hormones that send girls into early puberty and to the Target bra section well before their molars come in.

Back in the old days, our cows and chickens grazed and pecked in the pastures, and maybe this is the reason a girl (except for the rare few) didn’t need a training bra until 12 or 13.

Speaking of training bras, I’m not quite sure why they are so named. It’s as if we awkward adolescent girls with braces and zits need one more thing to add to the mix. Budding breasts that require some sort of garment to guide them, as if they are seedlings requiring coaxing from the earth.

“Here, honey. Put this bra on and we’ll just train those things to do what God and Mother Nature intended,” many a mom has maybe said at Sears in the intimate apparel department.

“Train them for what?”

“For adulthood. For becoming a woman.”

This makes absolutely no sense. Neither do today’s training bras, which, just like the rest of the fashions on the racks, are hoochie-coochie garments made for wee-tarts instead of sweet-tarts.

What happened to little girls on the cusp of teenhood? Why do all the training bras have padded cups?

My very own mama says she took us shopping for bras when we were in junior high, though I can’t remember a single moment of the experience.

Certain people are good at blocking the unpleasant, and I can only wish the day my school delivered “the pamphlet” was forever banished from the brain.

For those who managed to dodge or dislodge the pamphlet, allow me to push it back to the forefront. It was that booklet the school guidance counselor delivered about what happens when a girl becomes a woman and other “gross” stuff.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the pamphlet came with a sample feminine product and equipment that looked like a lasso. I rushed home and threw it in the garbage.

Which is where I also threw my training bra.

Who needed it?

If I felt the urge to splurge, there was always Charmin.

The problem with Charmin is placement strategy and shaping skills.

One has to get the wad just right and in proper alignment with the garment, which also must be snug enough so that the toilet-paper breast doesn’t fall into an armpit or abdomen.

The first and last time I used Charmin Enhancement Therapy was during a fifth-grade recital. I was to sing, “I’ve got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates, You’ve Got a Brand New Key,” with a fellow student who resembled Pamela Anderson Jr.

I took matters (and Charmin) into my own hands and stuffed.

Halfway during the show, my Charmin charmers flew out of the armholes and onto the stage.

The laughter still rings in my ears.

I’ve switched to Cottonelle.

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