BEING THERE : At Least They’re Flammable
“It’s not a bra for every day,” the saleswoman confides. “It makes you look too perfect.” Is it possible for my breasts to look too perfect? I’m skeptical, but entering the Broadway dressing room, Wonderbra draped on my arm, I am about to find out.
For months, it seemed, the women of Los Angeles had been waiting--teased by reports from New York and San Francisco--for this miraculous undergarment that is supposed to create cleavage where once there was merely neckline. I’m not the sort to succumb to hype about a bra--I’m modestly endowed, and having come of age in the feminist era, I’m not really much of a bra-wearer at all--but, I have wondered what life is like for the voluptuous.
Voluptuousness, of course, is what the Wonderbra and its counterparts pledge to deliver through a complex piece of engineering that--says the ad--creates “a deep, deep plunge and pushed-together effect.” Even I wasn’t immune to such an alluring promise.
But tracking down a Wonderbra wasn’t so easy. The Downtown Robinsons-May didn’t have it in stock. “People are asking for it every minute,” a saleswoman told me. Same story at the Broadway. Robinsons-May at the Glendale Galleria had a mere handful left except in fire-engine red. Not even for cleavage would I purchase a bright red bra. I finally found a white one in my size at the Galleria Broadway.
In the fitting room, I contemplate the effect. Hmmm. Not bad. The optional padding is a bit much, and I remove it. But the “pushed-together effect” is in operation, giving me my own modest version of the Cosmo-gal look. There’s no denying the novelty, for a 34 A, of having cleavage. I spend a good 15 minutes admiring myself from different angles in the dressing room mirrors.
Yet I doubt my new $26 Wonderbra will become part of my wardrobe, which runs more too jeans and T-shirts than plunging necklines. And with all that lifting and pushing, it isn’t as comfy as less aerodynamically complicated lingerie or going au naturel. But I’m not sorry to have a specimen tucked in my drawer. You never know when you’ll need a little push.
