Ewa Michalak SM Beżyk Reviewed and Swooping and Scooping

Hello readers! Its been a little while since I posted a review and I have quite a few bras I want to write about, so hopefully this will be the first of many reviews to come in the next little while. I have a couple reasons for my recent lack of blog presence. Number 1: Pokemon X did, and continues to, consume my life. I’m working on completing my Pokedex, training up some of my favourite Pokes for battle, and of course…

… making my trainer as stylish as possible (This isn’t my spite actually. I’ll see if I can get some images of her for you all sometime. Spoilers: she looks like a detective and it is the best).

Reason number 2 for my absence: My boobs have been behaving strangely. A lot of my bras have been feeling too small, but a size up is too large. I was getting a bit annoyed and stressed about all of my pretties fitting me poorly, because my boobs didn’t even look larger to me. I was wondering I had somehow changed shape, and now I needed a new style of bra to suit me. But it turns out the answer was quite silly, and very simple. Let’s begin the review, and all will be revealed soon.

I still seem to measure 26 inches around my ribcage (27 inhaled), but I’m finding regular 28 bands comfortable these days as opposed to tight 28s and 26s. This means in a lot of Ewa Michalak bras, I now opt for a 30 instead of a 28 (though exceptions to this rule do exist). The SM Beżyk in a 30 feels like perfection around my ribcage. It hits the sweet spot of just tight enough to feel secure without feeling restricted. The cups are nearly perfect. My smaller side is as comfortable as could be, but I would like the cups to come up slightly higher on my larger side. All in all, I’m happy with the fit, and the lower cut of the bra and near perfect match for my skin make it a perfect “solution” bra to wear with trickier clothing. It’s especially handy under my light coloured button up shirts, it’s completely invisible under them!

One of my favourite things about this bra are the straps. They’re narrow enough to look attractive and thick enough to be comfortable- perfect! The way the straps are attached to the cups is also a great little feature. The thicker piece of fabric where the straps meet the cups really help to pull everything inward and upward. The shape is fairly minimized, especially compared to other Ewa Michalak styles I’ve tried in the past. It’s not as supportive as bras like my Cleo Marcie or Miss Mandalay Paige, but those two bras provide some serious anchorage. The support I get in this bra is pretty remarkable considering how low cut and lacy it is! It’s a bra I’m really happy to have in my collection, and bust out whenever I need it to disappear into my skin or if I just want to feel damn comfy- did I mention that this bra is damn comfy?

The wires, as you can see, are refreshingly narrow. I’ve been sporting a lot of Masquerade and Cleo styles lately, so to put on an EM bra again is like a breath of fresh air. I did find the wires uncomfortable on the first wear, but since this this has become one of my favourite most comfortable bras. So just keep in mind that you may experience some discomfort on the first wear, but it does not persist (I have a friend who also ordered an SM bra and experienced the same discomfort for a couple of wears, and it went away for her as well).

So to quickly recap some of the main features of this bra:

Narrow wires

Supportive straps

Forward yet minimized, rounded shape

Band has four adjustment settings- lots of life in this bra! Closes with two hook-and-eyes in a 30F

Sturdy lace- not stretchy

Low-cut, open cups. Basically fits like a demi bra

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So now that the review is out of the way, let’s discuss swooping and scooping. As most of us know, this is when you scoop all the tissue from your armpit area into the cups, so as to help properly fill out your cups and aid in tissue migration (getting the breast tissue out from your armpits and onto the front of your body). But is there such a thing as swooping and scooping too much? My answer is yes, I think there is. Here are some pictures of myself in the SM Beżyk when I’ve scooped everything from my armpits and sides into the cups:

As you can see, the fit is not looking so great when I scoop everything from my armpits into the cups. I’d like to say right now that you should ALWAYS scoop all of your breast tissue into the cups, but the issue I was having that was complicating my fit so much was that I was scooping skin and fat into the cups, not breast tissue. Allow me to demonstrate my incredibly stretchy skin that was throwing off the fit of my bras. Ladies and gentleman prepare…

It’s not very uncommon for people of Scottish/Irish decent to have stretchier skin than the average person. I’ve actually had friends who can stretch their skin even further than this by a considerable amount. Good party trick? Or creepy? Both? Both. Basically, all this stretchy skin was ending up in the cups, and making it near impossible to get a proper fit. In a 28FF the wires would be too short and the cups would overflow. In a 28G the wires would either be *okay*, too tall or wide, and the cups would gape. The crease in my skin in the three-quarter view picture is just my skin stretching into the cup, not breast tissue.

My point is that there are likely a minority of us who fully swooping and scooping won’t work for. My current method is to put on my bras while bending over, and just scooping the rest of the breast tissue I can find into the cups, being careful not to scoop all my underarm skin into the cups. I find that it’s easier to differentiate between the two while bent over as opposed to standing up. I have found my bras to be so much more comfortable and look a lot more attractive using this method, and the wires no longer pinch my skin! I doubt this swooping and scooping study will apply to many people, but hopefully the few who it does apply to see this and it helps increase the comfort of their bras.

So remember folks, swoop and scoop responsibly, and check out these kittens.

-Windie