Editor’s note: Happy Thanksgiving! I’m in Ohio for my cousin’s wedding. I hope all is well. This post is, well, fluffy in comparison to the last, but sometimes we need a little humor in our lives. Enjoy.
Forgive me, but I’m going to talk about bra shopping.
Bra shopping is kind of like jean shopping: heinous, depressing and futile. Imagine you’re me: you’re five-foot-four, you have short legs for your height, and, of course, your waist is larger than the corporately-determined size for your height-to-waist ratio. In other words, you purchase a pair of jeans to fit your waste, and lo and behold they’re like 4 inches too long. On top of that, jean makers these days for some reason think that “waist” means “half-an-inch above butt crack,” making it virtually impossible to find a pair of jeans that sufficiently covers all pertinent areas unless you’re willing to venture into the unchartered territory of tapered old lady jeans. Which I, for one, am not.
Bra shopping is a similar experience. Firstly, clothing manufacturers have somehow deemed that every woman on the planet wants a padded and/or push-up bra. Good luck finding a regular ol’ no-frills bra that doesn’t make your boobs look like they’re a) in your collarbone or b) missing entirely behind a wall of padding of football-uniform caliber. Not only that, but they come in all sorts of ridonculous materials and colors and styles—like the hybrid, for instance, which can be a racerback, regular, strapless OR backless to accommodate any outfit while simultaneously flattening all minuscule semblance of breast tissue you may have previously had.
Call me bitter, but bra shopping sucks—so when you finally find a bra that works, you stick with that brand. Unfortunately, I discovered last week that J.Crew has discontinued its line of intimate apparels, which is a bummer because they are one of the few retailers out there that actually (used to) carry a reasonable bra. So I turned to the Gap in hopes of finding the right thing, and judging by the picture on the website, I think I may have purchased a very similar product to my old standard.
[DISCLAIMER: Yes, yes, I know, Gap and J.Crew—how could I? Rest assured, these are not stores I frequent for anything other than bras—but knowing how picky I am in the underwear department you'll just have to believe that they are, in fact, the best options. I love Goodwill, but what are the chances of me finding the right bra at a thrift shop? Believe you me, they are quite slim.]
Anyway, the whole point of this post is that when I was done on gap.com, they asked me to fill out a survey about my shopping experience. My days of quantitative sociology have taught me to fill out every survey ever (I love surveys!), so I could not resist the urge to comply. And, I was to find out, this particular survey very pleasurably left me a blank field into which I could input any comments I had. So I wrote:
1. Why must I create a login to purchase things through your website? I have 80 kajillion online logins, and I don’t feel the need to create yet another. Maybe I just don’t buy things online very often, but I wasn’t under the impression that a login is necessary.
2. WHY, why why why are so many of the bras you offer PADDED?!?! Some of us just want a little underwire support, without thick cups (you know what I mean? Those cups that aren’t exactly padded but are very much visible underneath clothing?) or bizarre shapes/styles. Luckily, you do offer one bra that fits my requirements (the sleek nylon demi), so PLEASE don’t discontinue it, because simple bras like this one are becoming increasingly difficult to find.
I certainly wasn’t expecting anything to come of my comments. Like, blah blah, complaints from one of our 6 billion customers. Woop-dee-do. And nothing probably will, but a few hours later I received the following email in my inbox:
Dear gap.com Customer,
We appreciate your comments to BizRate and wanted to reply to you. Thank you for your feedback regarding the need to create an account to order at gap.com. We are constantly changing and making updates to our online store, and we appreciate customer feedback. We will pass your message along to our web team, as customer feedback is the most important consideration when planning what updates will be made to the site.
We are sorry to learn of your disappointment with the current bra collection at Gap. We do our best to offer customers quality and style in our merchandise at a fair price. However, we definitely appreciate feedback from our customers – both positive and negative – and your message regarding more bra styles without padding will be shared with our Merchandising team. Customer feedback is the most important consideration when our merchants are planning what our merchandise selection will look like in the future.
We hope you will continue to visit gap.com to view our latest fashions.
Sincerely,
Roy
Customer Service Consultant
Who knew that Roy would be so understanding of the bra dilemma? So understanding that he’d send me an edited form letter, personalized to the specifics of my complaints? Kickass. I wonder what he’d have written if I’d included the following:
3. I know that buy purchasing my bra via gap.com that I am only supporting the bad guys, but c’mon! Why don’t you folks let up on the homogenization of the American landscape just a bit? Does there really need to be a Gap, Old Navy AND Banana Republic in every strip mall? Have you no respect for local cultures and communities? And while we’re at, perhaps you can take it upon yourself to have more accountability when you outsource your apparel production to companies that don’t pay their workers a decent wage or provide safe working conditions in their factories? I think it would be an excellent example for your giant corporation to take a stand and go sweatshop-free. Kind of like American Apparel, except without a creepy sex-fiend of a CEO.
I’m guessing he’d probably say something like this:
We are sorry to learn of your disappointment with our corporate ubiquity and the fact that we outsource to manufacturers that supposedly have unsafe working conditions. We do our best to offer customers quality and style in our merchandise at a fair price. However, we definitely appreciate feedback from our customers and your message regarding the possibility of there being too many Gaps and the potential problems with our manufacturers’ factories will be shared with our Marketing team. Customer feedback is the most important consideration when our marketers are planning what our public image will look like in the future.
Thanks for visiting bananarepublic.com oldnavy.com gap.com!
Sincerely,
Roy
14 responses so far ↓
1 Natalie B // Nov 24, 2006 at 6:30 pm
bwahahaha… entertaining
2 fern_forest // Nov 25, 2006 at 5:48 am
HERE HERE!
i have no idea why bra manufacturers have decided that all women need to be padded and pushed up but i think it is ridiculous. i won’t wear a padded push-up bra. come on, dude – boobs up to the chin of a 5’4″, 110 lb femme? i don’t think so. who are they trying to fool? i go braless before i do that shit. last time i bought bras i went with Warner’s from Macy’s. They were a little pricey (and of course made in Honduras) but they are super comfortable and i like the fact that I can racerback the back of them if i want to . those 5 bras in one are a little over the top, though. when i see “made in honduras” on my bra tag or “made in china” on a light-up, blinking snowman at target i can’t help but think, what the fuck must the people in these factories think as they are making these products? i can’t imagine making four hundred pieces of patio furniture without cursing the name of whomever is buying them. maybe that’s just me.
LOL at Roy’s empathy. maybe he’s had a hard time bra shopping too. and pants – well pants shopping is my absolute nemesis! i’d rather try on bikinis and THAT is sayin’ something.
Hope you are having a blast in Ohio!
3 TimsHead // Nov 25, 2006 at 7:46 am
V. entertaining, Laura! And educational! If by some incalculable miracle I ever become married, I may have to refer back to this bra tutorial at some point.
I do have to wonder if customer feedback is the most important consideration when [The Gap's] worldwide development team is deciding how best exploit economies of scale and regional labor conditions. Almost makes me want to fill out a similar survey for Roy’s boilerplate, self-effacing feedback.
[DISCLAIMER: Hey, I like shopping at J. Crew! But then now that I've bought an SUV, I'm just greased up for the slippery slope to yuppiedom. Or, as my friend Andrea (one of the hosts of the Vancouver housewarming party) noted, if I buy a golden retriever and have a Starbucks cup constantly adhered to my hand, the transformation would be complete. The former would be OK, but the latter is unthinkable.]
Thanks, also, for using the excellent term ridonculous. Always a joy to see such a festive, funny word.
4 Laura // Nov 25, 2006 at 9:10 am
Great post! I once sent a complaint letter to Starbucks about their beverages in the one more of the letter you didn’t send to Roy. I received a very polite “thank you for your comments” letter back, but never a real reply. I was disappointed. And yeah – what’s with American Apparrel being all like dirty myspace pages!
For bras I stick with the outlet stores. You have to try everything on, but somewhere in all the rejected irregulars, there’s something to fit me. Of course, I used to shop at Gap all the time for bras – where else can you find my inflated size at $4?
Jeans… phew. I’m no help there. Old Navy has good approximations for $20, but there’s the icky Old Navy feeling to it. Personally, I usually buy what fits, then have eight inches taken off the bottom. Whatever works!
^It’d be good to see Tim both married and an outted yuppie.
5 Meredith // Nov 25, 2006 at 9:55 am
I actually like the Victoria’s Secret no underwire ipex bras, because they don’t give me complete falsies. They’re not too padded, but they’re good for small-chested women who don’t want to look…fake. I have to order them online though, because I can’t get the slime off of me if I try to go into one of the stores.
I actually had this conversation with my friend Judy, vegan; non-mainstream dresser; anti-corporatization of the American wardrobe. She was lamenting the fact that one can find beautiful, unique clothing for everything else…but in the bra department, should one choose to wear one, a girl is sort of stuck with the standard issue major manufacturer types (unless you have hundreds upon hundreds to spend). Funny you had the same experience.
And yes, Emily did make that pasta horror. I gag every time I look at it, but it was too funny not to take a picture.
6 thinlizzy // Nov 25, 2006 at 7:07 pm
LOL!
As a somewhat buxom lass, I share your dismay that many bras are already full of padding. My goal is to be able to button my shirt and keep it closed, not to stop traffic. But perhaps bra manufacturers aren’t on my side. If I had lots of money I’d buy La Perla, but I don’t have lots of money so I have to settle for regular, overly-padded monstrosities. Maybe I’ll give ol’ Roy a call.
7 michael5000 // Nov 27, 2006 at 9:20 am
My most surreal job to date has been as a purchasing clerk in the bras department of a regional department store chain. It was an education in many ways. My favorite detail was the radically different stocking profile in the Utah stores, where racing stripes, fire-engine red, and really anything much beyond the white or beige basic article was right out.
But imagine my disappointment, as a naive, trusting, and enthusiastic young man, to find out about all that padding. So much padding. Yes, a little bit of my innocence died that year. I learned to doubt.
M5M
8 Anahita // Nov 27, 2006 at 5:21 pm
LOL is right. Two thumbs up for this post! Bra shopping DOES suck. It’s as simple as that. And I totally agree with you about that weird padding thing, btw!!
9 Sunshineboy78 // Nov 28, 2006 at 11:46 am
There are women out there who don’t want push-up or padded bras? WTF? What’s the point of wearing underwear that doesn’t over-accentuate your boobies?
10 Lynn // Nov 28, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Oh, God, you hit two areas (figuratively) that drive me nuts. Jeans that leave that 4-inches of extra fabric hanging in thing air, so that you have to cinch it in with a hip belt (which isn’t easy to find, either). Actually, I have so many old jeans from the era before bull-crack jeans that I actually have some that cover “pertinent areas.” That’s the beauty of letting jeans age. I can’t wait until this low, low waistline fad is over.
Bras! Impossible! I am small, so I actually don’t mind padding. But finding something that doesn’t show, or ride up my back or is comfortable is nearly impossible. Gap and J.Crew did not do it for me. I found some name brand ones at the dept. store. They will have to do.
RYC: It is, properly, Dance magazine, with the m down. That’s how their logo is.
Thanks for the cover comments. And Bastettom explained the no-housecalls plumber if you go back to my site and read comments.
Lynn
11 Lynn // Nov 28, 2006 at 6:13 pm
What’s with my typing. “thin air” and “butt-crack” are the proper phrases.
12 Flint // Nov 29, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Laura- I found this article today and oddly thought of you. I’m a little wierded out now that I associate you with bras, but hey. I’m all for proper support of unneccessary (in the a-functional, not currently breastfeeding sense) secondary sexual organs. Hope this helps.
http://wcbstv.com/local/local_story_331163833.html
13 kaz // Nov 30, 2006 at 1:40 pm
That’s funny. Seems like you and I are eternally struggling with corporate America.
Notice how I only comment when you comment on my site? Some friend, huh.
Peace
kaz
14 Boo // Nov 30, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Oh this was great! I have the same problems as I think most women do. You find one that works and then it’s discontinued.
I had no idea of the evil of Banana! I use them for work clothes precisely because they are fairly blah. But the pants at all three heads of Cerebus are just not cutting it.
I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful!