Review: BRAVISSIMO (Bras and Fitting Service)

So, it's my twenty-first birthday coming up. My mum asked me what I wanted for my great, big special present. At the moment that choice is pending, but I did manage to tell her what I needed - a couple of new bras. It is an issue that I have been struggling with for a very long time, my bra size. Hours and hours of measuring, calculating and judging my bra size has led me from the most bizarre sizes of 36B to somewhat more realistic sizes of 34DD. Turns out that both these sizes were wrong. I am, in fact, a 32G.

My advice to anyone before I begin this review would be this: do NOT trust internet bra measuring websites because a majority of the advice they feed you is rubbish. It is from one of these that I got the ridiculous fitting of 36B, a size I knew I couldn't possibly be. Although I know very little about bras I do know my body, and many of you will find you do too. Women can tell if their breasts are big or small. B is small, and my breasts are not. It is my back that is relatively small, yet because of being side-tracked by all these internet wonder calculators and do-it-yourself graphs, I allowed myself to believe that my back size was a 34/36 rather than a 32.

A few years ago when I was still a teenager, I complained to my mother that the bra I was wearing was riding up my back. I was wearing a 34D at the time. Another measurement on a graph provided (at the time) by Bravissimo suggested I should go down a size and it worked. Yet years later I was tricked into believing it was my back, not my cup, that was increasing.

Finally, with my 21st coming up, the one thing I truly desired was to have some proper fitting bras, My mother suggested that I get myself fitted properly at Bravissimo. She herself had discovered them during the 80s when she happened upon their store in Shepherd's Bush in London and has never looked back. I went to the one in Covent Garden as it was at the end of my bus route.

After a brisk look around I finally went downstairs to the fitting rooms and asked for a proper fitting. The first thing I noticed, to my delight, is that all the women who work at Bravissimo appear to have D+ cup sizes themselves, i.e. they aren't the pint-sized, skinny little things you find in other shops (Required to be that way in order for them to fit into the standard size 10 clothing). It is reassuring to know you are being tested by women who understand the problems you face when trying to find bras that fit. It appears to be the impression of most shops that women with larger breasts must be larger in every other department too. It is not true. Many of the women I saw, and myself, all turned out to have much larger cup sizes than we outwardly would seem.

Probably the most important thing, and I learned this from my fitting experience, is that very few women appear to understand the way bra sizes are supposed to work. Generally, the smaller the back, the larger the cup. It is entirely possible for a woman with a very small waist to have breasts even larger than a DD. One of the testimonials on the wall of the changing room described a woman's experience with the Bravissimo fitting:

For years I was told I was a 32C, it said, until I was fitted by Bravissimo and found out I was actually a 28FF!

It is estimated that a majority of women probably have an issue within their bra sizes and are currently wearing the wrong one. The reason for this likely comes down to the fact that most women believe that their back is larger than their bust. I can assure you that this was my mistake. Having so much trouble with my bras, I thought about getting a 36, which rather than making the matter better would have actually made it worse.

The fitter and the trainee girl who booked my appointment both sat in on the biggest question in my life. Now, first thing you have to know about Bravissimo is that they NEVER use measuring tapes. It may seem silly but, let's face it, no one can ever get the same result from a measuring tape. It is a fact that women's breasts also change shape depending on the time of month, so measuring results are all the more unreliable. Instead, they use their knowledge of how a bra should fit to find the right one. For me, the cup size was too small and the back-size was obviously too big. First they tried me with a 34F but found my bust was still too clammed in and my back was too loose.

She explained then that she was going to take me down a back-size, and up another cup size. Now, because my back size had gone down, she had to take me up two cup sizes to my current size: 32G.

The special treatment does not end here. Once the correct bra size is found, they bring out several different types of bra (at whatever colour or type you want) for you to try. Moreover, if you need anything special - like a sports bra, maternity bra or swimming costume - they will fit you properly for that as well.

Considering that a majority of women wear the wrong bra size in the country, under the delusion that they are no bigger than a D or DD, I think that every woman who feels uncomfortable in her bra needs to get to her closest store pronto and get yourself fitted! Do not trust Marks and Spencer's fittings, which are notoriously poor especially in regards to women who have small backs and larger busts.

Trust me, you will never have a better fitting than at Bravissimo. Moreover, if you do have a cup size over DD and a back-size of between 28 and 40, it is the only place where you can by pretty bras that last and are somewhat affordable.

10/10

Notes:

1. Remember that if you go to your local Bravissimo, there are more sizes in the stock room. So if you can't your size in a bra on the shop floor just take it downstairs and ask them to check for you.
2. Fittings are mainly drop-in so it is best to go late morning or early afternoon if you can to avoiding waiting too long.
3. When you are at the till, sign up for the mailing list. This may sound unattractive but you can opt out of receiving any correspondence and, if there are any problems with your bra after a month of purchase, they will often take the bra back and replace it with another.

The Power of Shipping in Fandom

I have recently been reflecting on my consistent days within that taboo word amongst non-members (i.e. non-fangirls) of the dreaded land known as 'Fandom'. Sounding like some forgotten village out of the Internet Religious Bible, Fandom is both a mystical, magic and moronic place to spend your time. It is friendly, ugly and frighteningly addictive. Many a young girl might just enter into it and find herself pulled, dragged, sicked, kicking and screaming into its very dark and murky depths. It is where hardcore fans gather and, more often than you'd think, it where genuine love for the very thing they are celebrating goes to die.

The picture I am painting sounds like a terrible, deadly waste land, doesn't it? Yes.

I am writing this article not just to explain the habitual habits of a fan within an internet fandom. This may not only warn early visitors (referred to as "lurkers" in the fandom) of what to expect if they decide to make their presence more known, but also aid the parents of the younger fans about what it is their children are getting into. Believe me, some of the things that come out in fandom posts and comments can be more damaging to a teenage girl that some idiot writing "COCK!" every five seconds on an internet chatroom. I say that not to underplay the danger of internet chat room, but instead to alliterate the fact that, in some cases, the wrong people within fandom torment a girl or boy almost as dangerously as someone within a chatroom environment.

It is the most positive same-sex relationship fanclub you will ever see, but also the must disgustingly racist sector you can come across. It promotes feminist ideals while at the same time beating them, spitting on them, downright pissing all over them as very often one female character will be idolised while another is vilified. It is one of the most positive and excitable places you can be, while being the most negative and tiring death-trap you will ever stumble into.

However, I need to say this first:

To clarify, a majority of the people within fandom (who, it must be said, are chiefly women aged from as young as 12 to as old as 60) are nice people who want to share a particularly keen to share their views and theories about a certain TV show, film series or novel they are reading. They are not bad people, they conduct themselves properly and they will usually not engage in so-called "ship-wars".


Now, some of the biggest fandoms out there, none of which (admittedly) I have ever been a part of, include Glee, The Vampire Diaries, Game of Thrones and Smallville. I cannot speak for these particular fandoms, but I can speak for slightly smaller fandoms which I have interacted with since I was a shockingly young age right up until towards the end of last year when I finally started to tire of being a "professional fanatic". Some of the fandoms I have been a part of in the past included Doctor Who, Merlin and Being Human and also a very brief spat with the Torchwood fandom. It is from these personal examples I will draw on.


From my time in each and every one of these fandoms I have discovered one thing in particular, and that is that it is very clique orientated. That is to say, in true Mean Girls style, due to being a chiefly female-dominated dominion, many fandoms that run for as few as three episodes will quickly start to have preferences for certain characters and, with that, certain ships.

The way this develops depends on many things but it usually comes down to two factors: the type of show and the number of primary characters.

A fandom like Doctor Who usually only has a few ships at any one time, due to the low-level of primary characters. In the current show, for example, as the Doctor (Sometimes referred to as "Eleven" in the fandom or general DW fanbase), Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song. Due to the small size of the character pool, there are a very limited number of ships. Ones that are more common (For obvious reasons) are Amy/Rory, Amy/Eleven and Eleven/River, with the first and the third being more popular than the other. Moreover, it helps also that River herself is a recurring character, meaning she is not always part of the action, meaning that most fans watch the interactions between Eleven, Amy and Rory, and because Amy and Rory are married it is generally accepted with good grace that they are a leading ship, and generally there very few serious conflicts - known as ship-wars - in the Doctor Who fandom.

This goes in to a little theory I have called the 'Threeway Theory', which has probably been proposed by more qualified people who have studied the fandom in academic circumstances. It basically states that three is the magic number. It is usually proposed in linguistics and communication studies that people respond better to words that are delivered in three. It is the same principle with fictional characters. If a show has only two to three main characters, then logically the character pool is smaller and the number of ships people can make is more limited, which means less conflict and more room for preference either way.

Of course there can be situations where the reaction is all the more harsher because the act of having three people at the centre of the show can create more friction, especially in a male-female-male or female-male-female situation because this anticipates a very literal triangle. This can sometimes be the case but the manner in which a show can deal with this is by defining the characters by other things. For example, the lack of conflict in the Doctor Who fandom generally revolves around the fact that a good portion of the fandom accept the Doctor, being an alien, is not the same as Rory, who is a male human.

Moreover, Steven Moffat established very early on that Amy/Rory were going out, that they were going to get married and that Amy was in love with Rory, which left the fandom with no choice but to accept this. In comparison to Russell T. Davies, who dragged out the relationship between the Doctor, Rose and Mickey, ultimately created a fiction within his own fanbase, especially when Rose left. The reaction against Martha Jones's character was similar to when Henry VIII switched Queens. Imagine Rose Tyler as Catherine of Aragon and Martha Jones as Anne Boleyn. By adding another female character while giving the previous leading female a sad, but ultimately unsatisfying send off, it invited the fandom to hate the character who was replacing her.

This led to 'ship-wars' centred on characters, rather than specific couples. Some Rose-fans, who may or may not have shipped her with the Tenth Doctor, would witchhunt anyone who dared to say they preferred Martha. Yet when Donna Noble came along, the fandom's loyalty was spread three ways and there were fewer ship-wars.

However when there are more than three characters, this is when the wars become more tense. The simple reason for this is variety. Logically, if there are more regular characters, there are more interactions that can be twisted into romantic gestures. After merely a few episodes of the first series of Merlin, the chief (and only real) ship had emerged - Arthur/Gwen, and with that Gwen/Lancelot (Lancelot being a secondary character and therefore not really applicable). The set up of Merlin meant that, logically, with Arthur as a Prince and Guinevere as a Servant, they were going to fall in love 'across the class barrier'. However due to the shows failure to affectively suggest this in a realistic light until episode 10, the fans formed ship-ideals that were not only completely dead in the water but downright wrong.

The greatest oddity of all comes from the overwhelming number of women who openly ship (quite seriously) Arthur/Merlin, despite no suggestion whatsoever of a romantic relationship. It is very tempting to pad all this down to an expression of female sexuality, a reverse on the male fantasy of two women together. However, in my experience, some of the girls who support these types of ships (i.e. male characters together who are NOT homosexual within the show), they also seem to despise with every fibre of their being the female character who is really the object of the hero's affections. This is sometimes the case with Gwen. For me, it stems from several reasons. A minor section of them, in the particular situation, are simply racists (Had to be said, I'm afraid), while others appear to be self-hating women. This is the negative affect of fandom as basing their entire love of a show around a ship, one that can never be truly realised, is frustrating. This then leads to overall negativity and fighting with other sections of the fandom that they don't agree with.

Eventually, the fandom will realise that these fights are a problem and, so, in the case of somewhere like LiveJournal or on a general internet forum, certain "cliques" of the fandom retire to "communities" or threads specifically for that ship or character. More often than not, shipping communities are more active than general communities. At its height, the Arthur and Gwen community on LJ for Merlin could get over 4000 comments on an episode post, while a general community would be lucky to get more than 100 comments.

This is the cyber version of the Great War, an all around "stalemate". That isn't to say that shippers do not occasionally clash and fight, (usually the younger members aged between 12 to 14 who are unaware of the stalemate). It is a nuclear missile strike situation: neither fanbase wants to be targeted as having 'struck the first blow' against another. Neither group can make a move towards peace because, and this is a fact, a significant portion of fandom-dwellers, (I was one of them once), prefer the safety of their fellow shippers with whom they are more likely to agree. Bizarrely enough many of these people might have nothing whatsoever in common, in regards to their feelings and theories about the show or just in general, yet they still prefer each others company to someone who they know hates their preferred ship.

That is not to say that people do not ship more than one thing nor have friends who prefer different ships. After all, there are always exceptions. Nonetheless it is generally true that people who have an OTP (One True Pairing) will prefer communities about that couple to any other. Once the Group Think has sent in for someone in the fandom, that is when they get sucked in.

In the past, it has been easy to prevent cyberbullying and attacks of fans, particularly young ones, on communities as places like forums and LiveJournals often had moderators to ensure that no one was personally insulted by anyone within the fandom. However with mediums such as Twitter and Tumblr, two things I just can't get along with myself, becoming more popular, it is becoming harder to avoid cruel comments or upsetting statements.

Anyone outside the fandom would probably think it stupid for someone to be so invested in a character or couple on a TV show so personally, but they would equally be surprised how quickly one disagreement over something a petty as a fictional couple can turn bloody.

I am not saying that people should BAN fandoms. They are great places: centres of discussions, debates, networking, art, fiction, videos and all sorts of brilliant things. I just ask anyone who is just getting into it to be weary of how easy it is to get sucked in and carried away. Try not to use it everyday, and even if you do only for a short period of time, no more than an hour. It's great to make new friends but don't become obsessed. And for parents, be aware of your teenagers emotions. Fandoms are great places for them to boost their self-esteem with with fanwork and being able to communicate with people their age who might like the show too from the safety of their own home. Nonetheless, be aware of how quickly it can upset them too. Don't immediately block or ban it, just be understanding and talk it through with them. Be that other voice, outside the fandom, reminding them that its all fictional.

Most importantly be more aware of fandom itself. Look into it yourself. See what it's like. Overall, you will see its a good place and filled with remarkable things besides ship-dedications. Just try to understand its nature. Only then can any of us tame this beast.

Old Review: HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, Diana Wynne Jones

Like a dream it fills you up until you're full of joy...

Diana Wynne Jones is renowned for being "hotter than Potter" and her books are sold all over the world. They are popular and loved by each generation they touch. Diana Wynne Jones is famous for the award winning THE CHRESTOMANCI SERIES, and other works such as DARK LORD OF DERKHOLM. Yet out of all of her novels there is one novel which is without a doubt the most popular, treasured and loved of them all - HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. Most people who have read it will confirm that it is a charming tale of magic, love, humour and wonder. It touches the fibres of your heart so greatly that the sound of the character's names "Sophie", "Howl" and "Calcifer" bring a smile to your face. Although each character is faulted they are wonderfully painted so that you love them as if they were real people.

The story follows the tale of Sophie Hatter, the eldest of three sisters, who unfortunately lives in a world where fairytale traits are the laws of physics. For that reason, despite being attractive, intelligent and talented, the eldest child is destined to come to nothing. While her younger sisters go out doing their own thing, Sophie is forced to make hats in their late father's hat shop. However, it turns out that she has a remarkable talent with magic as well as a needle as she speaks life into the hats, giving them personalities so that good things will come to the wearer of the hat. This is how Sophie attracts unwanted attention from the jealous Witch of the Waste, thinking her a rival witch, and turns her into an old woman to punish her. Ashamed of her appearance, Sophie decides to seek help from the infamous Wizard Howl whose moving castle roams the hill above Sophie's home, and is known throughout Market Chipping as a wicked young man who sucks the souls out of young girls and feasts on their hearts.

Feeling unthreatened as an old woman, Sophie ventures inside and instead of finding Howl, she finds his fire demon Calcifer who convinces her to make a bargain with him - he'll lift the spell on her if she breaks the contract between Howl and himself. Sophie soon discovers that far from being evil and cruel, the Wizard Howl is a cowardly heartbreaker who takes pleasure in courting girls but dumping them before it turns serious. Also cursed by the Witch, Howl cannot allow himself to fall in love otherwise he must return to the Witch and give her his heart. In order to save Howl, Calcifer, and her own youth, Sophie has to hurry to find out how to free Calcifer and Howl from their contract before the Witch catches up with them.

A beautifully written tale of a cursed young girl and her cowardly sweetheart, HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is a light and hysterical novel with a heroine to love; an anti-hero to adore, and a villain to hate and fear, and yet pity. As the novel goes on and the love between Howl and Sophie grows, you heart dances with excitement and joy which rises up and up until the last chapter. The feeling of your heart beat is one of the most important factors of the novel; don't take it for granted. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is a book you will keep by your bedside forever, re-read every year or so, and cherish forever. I also recommend the animated film by Hayao Miyazaki of the same name. Both are truly stunning works of art.