Saturday was my birthday. I had a ten dollars off coupon from Victorian’s Secret, so that’s where I went to buy a new bra.

They say you should get measured for a bra every year, especially if your weight has changed. I’ve been on the WW since January, and have pretty much hit my goal, so I was due.

For the most part, losing weight and exercising more have been a good thing. I really do feel better, and my face and body have slimmed down, most of it in the right places. But here’s what’s a little disconcerting: How can I lose twenty-five pounds and still have a gut? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because I pretty much lost it all in my butt and breasts. No kidding. My butt has just disappeared. And the plumpness that was keeping “the girls” from going south has flown the coup, and taken my cleavage with it. Cleary, it was time for an intervention.

Now as a rule, I like to shop with my sister or my girl friends, but let’s face it: finding a new bra is solo thing ‘cause it’s serious business. It takes concentration and fortitude. You need to stay focused, and not get distracted by browsing around, talkin’, laughing’, havin’ a good time. In my opinion, shopping for a bra is right up there with shopping for a bathing suit. Both score very low on the ol’ fun-o-meter.

Still, I had this coupon, so off I went. I wanted someone to measure and wait on me, like how it was in the olden days. You know, grandmotherly old ladies wearing bifocals with tape measures ‘round their necks who give you two bra styles to try on, wait until you’re completely undressed, then whip back the curtain and say, “How you doing, dear?”

Au contraire! At Victoria’s Secret, the sales clerks are these girls young enough to be my grand-daughters. They’re all dressed in tight, black clothes, sportin’ long, straightened hair, a ton of make-up and a little too much perfume, if you ask me. They’re wired up like secret agents, talking into their lapels. Their “Mission Impossible,” (should they chose to accept it) is helping middle-aged gals like me find a sexy bra. Dream on, Ida!

“Can I help you find something?” this sales girl, “Brooke”, it says on her name tag, ask. She said this with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Why, yes,” I reply. “I’d like to get measured for a new bra.”

“Fine!” she says, and she instructs me to go out back, where Courtney, Heather, Bri, or someone will fix me up. So, I do.

I find a gal who looks an awful lot like Brooke, who asks me what size bra I have on? I tell her, but she measures me anyway. Then proceeds to take me to Victoria’s Inner Sanctum, where she unlocks the door to my dressing room, fills out a little card with my name and puts it in the slot outside the door, like they do with your file at the doctor’s office. Then she hands me two drawers with just about every bra style they make in my size, tells me to ring the button if I need her, and slam! The door to Fort Knox shuts, sealing me in my little dressing room, with black walls, thirty bras, a fun house mirror and some of the worse lighting I’ve ever seen.

Then, swear to God, I racked up at least one, maybe two, WW activity points putting on and taking off bras, one after another, and working up quite a dew, I must say. The culmination of this process was buckling myself into one I couldn’t get off. I mean, I was locked in like a friggin’ strait jacket! I’m thinking, To hell with the “service button,” they need an emergency lever in here! That got me to giggling, which only got worse the more I attempted to wiggle my way out of the darn thing. Oh, I would have made Houdini proud. As I inched the bra over my hips I got to thinking, I hope they haven’t got any secret cameras in here, recording this for You Tube!

Finally, I found a style that, through some miracle of engineering, managed to raise “the girls” up to where they should be, and give me a little cleavage to boot. Then, a different gal (I think) wrote the style on my card, and handed me over to another Courtney-Heather-Bri, who in turn took me back to the sales floor and left me to paw through a drawer filled pink, red, turquoise, leopard print bras in my size. What a process!

In the end, I bought two (a black and a flesh tone). So, I saved $10, spent $88, and got a “free” white cotton robe that says Victoria’s Secret on the back in big, gold letters, which makes it all worthwhile, right?

Bottom line: not one of all the thousands bras I tried on that day made me look sexy. Not one. Why? None of them addressed crinkly skin between my armpit and my bra, the way it kind of pooches out and refuses to lie flat. Don’t know when it happened, but it looks like this situation is here for the duration. Ah, c’est la vie, right? I say, once you get past a certain age, keep your arms at your sides and distract ‘em with cleavage. There, I just had to get that off my chest!

That’s it for now. Catch you on the flip side!

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