Pirate's Dream to Porn Star

Time to talk about boobs and riding. And the need for a great bra.

When I first started riding I was four and a half years old. At that point I wasn't much more than a big toddler taken along for the ride on any horse I was on. I was given a shetland pony for my eighth birthday and began participating in 4-H; weekly meetings and the county and state shows at the end of summer. During this phase in my life I was stick thin, wiry strong and often mistaken for a boy. I know it didn't help that I preferred to wear blue, green, brown or black and jeans whenever I could. I kept my hair cut short and played hard when I played. We jousted with broomsticks and boxing gloves. We played Planet of the Apes with real BB guns and nets made out of baling twine. My comrades and playmates were all boys and our playground the wide open fields and canals of Southeast Idaho. All of my time was spent on horses, riding for ten or twelve hours a day.

I guess my point is, I learned to ride as a pre-adolescent. Sans boobs.

Nothing much changed as I grew older, however. I stayed stick thin and undeveloped until I was almost sixteen. Even then, I was not a "if you've got it, flaunt it" kind of girl and always picked clothes that masked or obscured my developing chest. In Jr High and High School, I was known as a "Pirate's Dream", meaning sunken chest. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and no longer riding that my chest developed into a decent C cup.

Then came Clomid and childbirth. My decent C cup grew and grew and grew. I have spent years wearing bras that were too small to hold me, primarily because 1) I hate bras and refuse to spend a ton of money on them and 2) I refuse to wear an underwire, because I hate them. My current bra was a Bali, DDD, and just has not been doing the job. I decided that after 35 years of wearing the same style of bra (little support) that it was time to break down and buy a Playtex. They make bras that have great support without underwires.

I measured my chest according to the charts. I am an H cup. Freaking Porn Star. Not that I'm really comfortable with that assessment, and no one would want to admire my 52 year old chest in the pages of a magazine, however, just based on size, I'm freaking huge. (This is what comes of praying for a large chest - several decades to late to stop the teasing in High School, however.) So finding a bra in an H cup for less than $50 is pretty much impossible. Playtex doesn't go that big. They do, however, sell a G cup for $20.

I ordered them and tried them out on Sunday. First off, the fit is pretty good. Okay the right side is still a little squished, but I can't order a bra that has a G cup on the left and an H or I on the right. It has amazing support. No pinching, no binding, and no rash.

And, the most amazing thing . . . . my back pain was significantly less. In fact, during our ride I didn't feel my back pull at all. And my back feels much better today than it has in years. I can't believe that the weight of my chest was causing so much back pain. I'm seriously going to have to look into the benefits and costs of breast reduction surgery. If it can help aleviate the ongoing back pain, which sometimes reaches crippling pain levels, it might be worth it to not ride for six weeks.