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Q. Does wearing the wrong size or shape bra contribute to developing breast cancer?
A. Short answer? Nope.
Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, buying and wearing bras was a PITA (pain in the a**). My breasts were large and heavy and finding beautiful bras was not only difficult, it was expensive. Lawd... it was really expensive.
I will admit now that I wore the wrong sized bras for years. I mean, years and years and years... I was shoving my boobies (poor things) into bras that just were not meant to contain them. *sigh* I just didn't know any better.
If every store that you shopped in only went up to DD bras, then you might have thought (as I did) that DD was as big as bras came. So that meant that was the largest size that breasts came in too.
NOPE!
I would read instructions about how to take your breast measurements, but I always thought that I was doing it wrong.
*you don't have to laugh that hard at my ignorance... okay, you can giggle a little bit*
I would measure the area underneath my breasts (my chest) and then I would measure across my breasts (while wearing a bra because my breasts were large and well... they drooped, blame gravity)... and the difference in the numbers just didn't make sense. The difference was like 10 inches. I couldn't understand it. Stores I shopped in didn't carry bras larger than DD so I figured that I was doing something wrong and I kept buying DD bras and mashing my boobies inside.
*yep... it looked horrible*
Finally, I found my way to a great lingerie store in Atlanta and my lovely sales assistant looked at me, smiled... walked out of the dressing room and reappeared with these magical bras. They were soooo magical. My entire breast fit into the entire cup. That had never happened to me before. Prior to that trip to Intimacy I thought that my breasts were supposed to be mashed in and around and sort of across that chest area. (insert sad face) The day that I walked into Intimacy and walked out hundreds of dollars broker but lifted, separated and feeling super, duper sexy... was a magical day. Mag-EEE-cal!
All of that to say, I wore the wrong size bras for years. I wore bras that compressed my breasts to my chest. I guess I was trying to minimize their impact on the rest of the world. Sadly, I didn't need to do any of that. I just needed to wear the proper garment and things were all different.
Over the years I've read a lot of things about breast cancer and I've talked to a lot of people about breast cancer (oncologists, researchers, clinicians, nurses) and the truth is that cancer starts at the cellular level. Your cells stop doing what they are supposed to do... and it changes everything.
Wearing uncomfortable and ill-fitted bras won't give you cancer. It will make you look a lumpy mess under your clothes. Depending on the quality of the bra, it may chafe your skin or cause a rash... but it will not give you cancer.
I stopped shopping at Victoria's Secret a long time ago. Long, long before I discovered Intimacy and the magical land of bras that fit larger breasts. For me, they just stopped working. They didn't offer sizes that fit me. And that was even before I knew that I was an H-cup and not a DD-cup.
Yup. H cup. *let that marinate for a minute* I had some HOOTERS!
So, don't fret that you are uncomfortable in your bras and may be causing cancer. You're not. You just need to go on a shopping spree and splurge on yourself.
