Stop referring to yourself as your cup size.

I mean it.

“I’m a D cup.”

“I’m huge; I’m an F cup.”

“I’m pathetic; I’m, like, a double A.”

“I’m a freakshow; I’m a JJ.”

I totally used to do this, and I did it because I felt terrible about myself and my boobs. It irritated me to hear it coming out of my mouth, and it drives me crazy to hear it coming out of the mouths of beautiful women around me. Stop it. Y’all stop that nonsense, and say this with me now: I am not a cup size. You’re a person. You are not your boobs. They are not all there is to you. They’re lovely, and you’re a lovely, gorgeous woman, and your boobs are your own, and not for anyone else to judge. Not your friends, not your mom, not the asshole who hollers at you on the street, not your girlfriend, not your boyfriend, not your spouse. They are yours. You deserve to dress them however you please, and they deserve to be supported.

Oh, and furthermore, this whole “I’m a [cup size]” business drives me crazy, because saying “a D cup” is meaningless in the first place. As we all know (RIGHT?!?!?), the number and the letter work TOGETHER to describe your bra size. The one without the other is meaningless. Lost, floating D cups do not wander the globe helplessly until they latch on to lonely, pining band sizes. If you remove the cups from a 30D bra and a 34D bra and compare them, you are going to be holding two different shapes. The wire length and shape, the cup volume, the amount of fabric, the seam patterns, etc. all vary widely from size to size, even if the letter on the label is the same. A 28D does not equal a 30D does not equal a 38D. Y’all follow me? So when you say “I’m a [cup size]”, you’re inaccurate, and I love linguistic accuracy and will fight you, and you’re also kind of just saying “I wear bras.” Congratulations, that’s why we’re all here. Well, that and the cake.

While I’m preachin’ in here, celebrities and celebrity magazines are lying liars who lie. I hate to pick on her again, because the great Sophia Jenner and others have already pointed it out, but Christina Hendricks wears the wrong size bra. She does. The media reports that she wears a 38DDD (UK 38E). I don’t know if that is indeed the size she’s wearing, because it doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing she’d reveal for reporters to bandy around, but it’s still the wrong size for her. I know it because I understand how bra sizes work and that size makes no sense with her figure, but I also know it because it LOOKS like she’s wearing the wrong size. At premieres, awards shows, and press events, she doesn’t look comfortable, and she looks like she’s making the best of a bad situation. We’ve all seen her in Mad Men. There is no way her figure is anything other than a good, good, GOOD situation.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? Go back to the start of my post. It’s actually none of my damned business. I want to reach through the internet and give her a hug and say, “Hey, this will be fun! Let’s go find a bra that feels great and does your fine self justice.” But I don’t know Christina Hendricks. I’ve never seen her in real life. I have no right to go spewing my opinion of what she’s doing wrong with her body all over the internet. This woman is gorgeous beyond all reason, and she is also crazily, crazily talented. Her acting work on Mad Men is subtle and heartbreaking and intelligent and spectacular, and I’m sure she’d rather us be talking about that.

Dear all of us: stop speculating all over the internet about her bra size. A) You’re doing it wrong, and B) it doesn’t fucking matter. She is not her boobs. She is a whole person, with a mind and a soul. She deserves not to be reduced to her boobs, or even worse, her bra size. NO WOMAN DOES. It breaks my heart and sends me into a rage when tabloids and celebrity mags gleefully crow over so-and-so’s “bouncing Double Ds” or clutch their pearls over a starlet’s enhanced “F cup nightmares”. You cannot read about a woman without judging her life based on her boobs, their (alleged) cup size, how she dresses them, what she does with them. Stigmatizing women who wear larger cup sizes is despicable. Stigmatizing women who wear smaller cup sizes is just as bad. This type of language is hurtful to the women it describes, and it’s hurtful to the women who read it and internalize it. The only person who needs to know your bra size is you. The only person who should be guessing it is your bra fitter. End of story.

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