Probably TMI - Underthings

One of my first memories is of when my sister and I accompanied my mom up to a lingerie counter when we were little girls. I remember her asking for a C cup, and then for bra extenders. Back then I didn't know what any of that was, but I remember asking my mom why she wore a bra. "To give clothes a nice shape," I remember her telling me.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I finally learned about bra cup sizes. First of all, most of women in my family are not very well... ahem... endowed. And there was no way in hell that my mom was a C cup. My sister and I quickly learned that my mom wore a C cup bra solely to "give her clothes a nice shape" in place of wearing a padded bra. As we got older and started wearing bras ourselves, we kept learning more things about my mom's strange undergarment habits- none illustrated so clearly as the time we all went shopping together in Taiwan.

First off, please reference these posts for examples of my mother's poor fashion choices. So one of the activities my sister and I enjoy is taking my mom shopping. We were in Taiwan when sister spotted a beautiful blue floral patterned V-necked dress. It was not a super deep V, more on the conservative side, and we knew that the belted waist would look nice on our mother. We got her in it and zipped it up, but in order to get the dress to look right, we had to tighten up her bra. Why? Because it was hanging loosely on her, riding up in the front, and peeking out the front of the V-neck. Mom- we told her, we'll buy this dress for you, but when you wear it, you HAVE to tighten up your bra or else it'll show in the front. Fine, fine, she agreed. So my sister bought her the dress. Since it was sleeveless, we even bought her a matching cardigan.

Not the actual dress, but this one is similar.

That evening, we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant with some of our relatives. Excited for our mom to wear her new outfit, we tightened up her bra and zipped her into her new dress. We did her hair and my sister put makeup on her. I probably have photos somewhere, but she looked nice. We were talking to our cousins, and when we turned around, she had her new cardigan wrapped around her neck, covering the front of her dress. Turned out that she had undone her bra, and in order to hide the fact that it was riding up her chest, draped her cardigan around her neck to hide it.

After we left the restaurant, we were like, Mooooooommm, you said you weren't going to loosen up your bra!!! That was part of the deal!

Her reply? "It was so tight! I just can't think because it's so tight!"