Adventures in Bra Shopping

To continue discussion of beauty ideas and physical features...

This was the title of a group email sent out by a female friend here in Taiwan. I once wrote a restaurant review for the Yokohama Echo entitled Adventures in Squid Wrestling, but I suppose that story is not really related and is best saved for another post.

Anyway, this female friend has a TINY ribcage and a less than tiny bust! Imagine trying to find something suitable in Canada, let alone Taiwan. Even Taiwanese women's backs are not so small... and as for the cup size, well.... When reading her story, I really had to laugh as she pointed out a few things that I just never gave much attention to... namely that there really is an obsession with breasts and bust size here in Taiwan (not that this is an obsession exclusive to Taiwan)!

When I first arrived, I remember noting that during the daytime, every second channel had an infomercial about miracle bust enhancing drug + massage regimes. In fact, a foreign English teacher I knew here in Taipei was recruited to "play doctor" for one of these infomercials. She got to put on a white lab coat and walk around the set guesturing at the Taiwanese women's busts while babbling about anything in English (there was voice over, so she didn't need to say anything clinical at all). Mind you "Jennifer" was recruited both willingly and unwillingly a lot. Being blonde, she was swamped with attention. One day we actually saw a picture of her teaching her kindergarten kids on the side of a bus... but the funniest part was that it was advertising a cram school she didn't teach at (again... a story deserving of it's own post).

Second obvious clue that there is a bust obssesion... women actually size each other up! Sometimes when gong to lunch in the elevator, women will say things like, " Julie, you should be second in line and then we will be lined up in order of bust size!" (Of course this is a translation, so I am not sure if it is exactly accurate). Anyway, I find it a little strange as I would certainly never comment about my coworkers' bodies back home. However, I guess I don't really feel that uncomfortable with it as I lost some of my ability to really be surprised by these types of comments at some point during my stay in Korea. I suppose that here, as in Korea, there are a lot of women with sugically enhanced busts and who waste lots of money at the spa on "size-up" treatments. I suppose there are some back home as well, but I have been in Asia too long to really know current North American trends.

The final clue is the number of "bra accessories" on the market. (Actually there are a lot more clues I could enumerate, but it might get a little tedious for those of you who don't need bras). Anyway, the number of bra accessories rivals and maybe even outnumbers the number of PDA accessories and would appear to be beat only by cell phone accessories. How's that for excessiveness? You can buy a HUGE variety of clear plasted bejewelled and otherwise decorated detachable straps. How about gel pads to bring you up 2 cup sizes, but keep that natural feel? There is also bra jewelery and converter straps and... well, you get the picture. The only problem is that ALL of the"hardware" items are massively uncomfortable... too many wires and stiff bits, too much inflexible plastic, too many scatchy decorations. Most of these come from China and can be bought on the market for as cheap as $5.00 Canadian, but the slightlier skin-friendly ones come from France or Spain. However, they can reach prices of approximately $300.00 Canadian. I, for one, will wait for my next trip abroad to go shopping.