Busting At The Seams

I had all sorts of things to prepare before a job interview this week.

I’m sure you can relate. I had to update my portfolio, brush up on the work lingo no one really uses outside interviews, memorize the company’s website and absolutely everything the interviewers have done or will do in the duration of their working lives. As the interview was in another country with a language I don’t speak, I had to book a flight and emotionally blackmail my German-speaking ex-boyfriend into giving me a Skype lesson.

With all these tasks scribbled in my diary, you’ll be amazed to learn I spent three hours the day before my flight charging around the city in the rain. Why, you ask?

I was shopping for a blouse.

There are a great many of you rolling your eyes and wondering what sort of silly, vain person I am. But some of you are nodding your heads, perhaps having a wry laugh to yourselves. Why all this frantic, failed consumerism?

I have big boobs.

Let me clarify. I possess large mammaries paired with an ordinary-sized self. It’s a curse for which I gleam little sympathy. If I find a blouse that fits, it bursts apart at nipple-height. If I find a buttonable, office-ready top that safely contains my breasticles, the arms are a metre too long, the shoulders flap in the wind and the waist hovers around my knees.

Fuck the high street, is what I say. When I buy vintage, everything fits. Back in the day they made clothes to fit women, rather than bullying women into fitting clothes. A journey into Topshop is an exercise in androgyny, and if you happen to have missed the genetic androgyny boat, you’ll just have to wear all your leftover clothes from that season when shapeless sweatshirts were quite the thing. You’ll also have to (possibly) change careers to ensure your office dress code allows for wearing absolutely anything that will contain your tatty bojangles.

Buy vintage, ladies. It fits your tits.

Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com