Misinformation correction: M&S Staff

These are all bra sellers or people whose job is to sell fashion.

So say the “professional bra fitters”.

It’s a bit like the old “you should spend a month’s salary on an engagement ring” says the diamond marketing board.

I have never had a bra fitting and my bras have not risen up and strangled me or otherwise caused me harm. They fit fine. It’s not that difficult to understand, there’s chest size and cup size. You could just try a load and find which is best. Or if you prefer it, get a fitting, but they don’t have to be professionally fitted.

It’s not like a gas boiler.

I'm surprised you say that. I'm pretty sure I got bra fittings as a teenager 40 years ago, and certainly 25 years ago when I was changing size during pregnancy, breastfeeding and afterwards.

I was on the Health and Safety committee at work for a few years. We ran manual handling courses, followed the regs on protective clothes, hats, gloves and shoes for specific jobs, and tried to make sure desk-based people had good lighting and suitable chairs.

But never ever mentioned bras.

I never go for bra fittings. I know my boob or bust size though. And I don't bother with bras anymore anyway as I just wear those vest tops with inbuilt bras. Or wirefree bralettes and sports bras when I do exercise. I am never putting myself through the torture of wearing a wired bra again.

Hard to see how bra fitting falls under ‘health and safety’. Maybe occupational health, but that might be a stretch.

I really don’t think it is. It’s certainly not common sense.

None of your links relates to Health and Safety, they all link to aspects of the fashion industry. If you don't trust your own ability to fit your own underwear have at it, but don't claim it's a medical issue.

Health and safety is not "total bollocks", it's there fore a reason! These are the specialists. Most people trust the specialists and trust Health and Safety.

If you read the articles (which you haven't had time to do) it outlines why this is so.

And every (unless flat chested) woman needs a bra. There is no need to 'sell' them. They're a necessity. They don't need an advertising campaign!

I had a tiny chest and wore crop bras until I became pregnant at 31 and had my first bra fitting at a maternity place - 38B apparently.

I’m not. I’m a 34D.

You know that's total bollocks, don't you? Good for drumming up customers and making money for the fitters, but not actually a necessity. We didn't all die of Wrong Bra Sizes in the decades before they were a thing.

I got my first bra 26 years ago and it was definitely a thing. And recommended by Drs and health education at school, for posture especially. It was a thing when my mother was a teen in the 1960s. And I believe even going back before then. It's a very old phenomenon, not new.

It really worries me that there are actually women that never realised you are supposed to have your bra professionally fitted, by the professionals, for health and safety reasons. Didn't their mother explain this to them?

https://www.intimo.com.au/blogs/stories/when-to-get-a-bra-fitting?srsltid=AfmBOop8VLLihFJuwvJj11SfJI6Jt6p2JMJ5buIzUsBGhKh4iAHw7Cvt

Where to Get a Professional Bra Fitting (and Why You Should)
https://glamorise.com/en-au/blogs/news/where-to-get-a-professional-bra-fitting-and-why-you-should

Professional Bra Fitting: Why It Matters and What You Don’t Know About Bra Sizing
https://brafittingwisdom.com.au/bra-fitting/professional-bra-fitting/

https://lineaintima.ca/pages/bra-basics?srsltid=AfmBOooJo0V8l0Zw4-tjjMi91VkgMXUtSCy3Jxe_Av9X2dfdDcVjlpPC

https://style.nine.com.au/latest/bra-fitting-why-getting-professionally-measured-is-important/9a81e613-f3f9-488f-8902-9a1237aafd71

Back in my day getting fitted wasn't a thing. Even 20 years ago the idea of having bras fitted was still a novelty - and the results people report are very variable, with the lovely ladies who take one look and produce the perfect bra balanced by the obsessive - 'oh you need a smaller back and a bigger cup' merchants whose offerings get binned as soon as their victims get home.

Do bras come in 42AA?

Bras are supposed to be professionally fitted, especially when you get your first bra and your breast size changes in puberty. This is common knowledge.

because the child’s first instinct would be “oh no, he’s the person doing my fitting”.

This is a really good point. Male assistants around the womens underware department suggests that there's the possibility of some forced interaction.

Im convinced men think women have to get all of their bras professionally fitted. We can be trusted witg pants, but not bras.

Me neither, I found by trial and error that I’m a 38B in the makes and styles I prefer. I do buy my nicer underwear at an independent bra shop locally, the owner is very experienced but she “fits” by eye and whether I’m comfortable.
I really don’t think many girls have a first bra fitting. I expect they try each other’s on like we did - but I don’t even think I wore one from when I left school until I was about 30.

When I was thirteen the family went on holiday to Italy (by car! Get us! And the ferry we took wasn't even roro, the car was lifted onto it by crane! I didn't go on an aeroplane until I was in my forties) and for some reason a very motherly and interfering Italian Momma staying in the same small pensione decided that I needed the self-confidence a really good first bra would afford me. She swept me up in her wake and deposited me in a tiny specialist lingerie shop in a side-street in the local town, where a diminutive and utterly charming woman who spoke not a word of English measured me for a bra and then asked my mother to pay what seemed to me a huge sum (but turned out to be perfectly reasonable in sterling rather than lire) for what may have been the most comfortable bra I've ever had in my entire life.

In England it would all have been horribly embarrassing, but somehow in Italy it was an experience I just accepted as something them over there did.

Not to go off on a tangent but how would the fitter measure a trans identifying man for a bra? Big chest small 'boobs'? Men's bodies are obviously very very different

Apologies for the derail - it isn't pleasant to picture/imagine
Probably put you off tonight's dinner

I've never had a bra fitting in my life. Buying a bra imo needs an ability to self-measure, know what the numbers and letters mean, and assess the suitability of styles.

I can only imagine my horror if my mother had suggested to me at the age of 14 that someone would fit one of the beastly things on me.

Either way, there would be no reason for him to be lingering in lingerie to ask a child about it. That’s my point.

Given marks and Spencer are trusted by parents to do bra fittings on children, unlike say primark or h&m that don’t offer it, that’s another good reason for the company to implement the mother’s policy that none of their male staff will approach children or young women to offer help with underwear.

As I’ve said throughout this thread and others about the incident.

I don’t think I’ve made myself clear. Girls buying bras will at some point require a bra fitting. I think it would be arguably worse, if possible, for those children who had a fitting booked in to be then randomly approached by a male staff member offering ‘help’ - as in this case - because the child’s first instinct would be “oh no, he’s the person doing my fitting”.

That’s all. I didn’t suggest the male employee was offering them help justifiably.

👍

(leans over backwards trying to think of any possible explanation for this creepy man's creepy behaviour that is even half-way OK)

Maybe there was a fourteen-year-old booked in for a fitting that day and the man from a different department intuitively knew this, but mistakenly thought that the only fourteen-year-old he could see must be the one with the fitting booked?

(Ouch! I have now hurt my back leaning like that and it is All Your Fault, mean GC women!)