This story is part of RICE Media’s Storytellers initiative, a mentorship programme for budding content creators to learn about the art of creative non-fiction. This piece is a product of a partnership between RICE Media and Singapore Management University (SMU) for its Professional Writing module.
Top image: keri / Flickr
“If something happens, don’t come crying to us.”
That was the warning Nicole* received—not from strangers, but her own parents—as she stepped out in a low-cut top on a sweltering afternoon.
The cardigan they insisted on wasn’t for warmth, but for modesty. The subtext was unmistakable: if your body invites attention, the consequences are yours to bear.
For girls with larger chests, this kind of policing arrives early—and sticks.
You’re taught to contain your body. But no one equips you with the mechanics for that containment.
More than once, I’ve had retail assistants steer me toward the largest size they carried and insist that it fit. So I’ve paid and left, but spent most of secondary school and junior college years sore, strapped in, and still unsupported.
Nicole, a fresh graduate, wears a 34H bra. “In Singapore, bra fitting is a guessing game beyond a D cup,” she tells me.
In some countries, the phrase “bra fitting” means something. It’s a service—often offered in person, by trained professionals, in boutiques that carry sizes from A to K, with bands in the 30s, 40s, and everything in between.
In Singapore, bra boutiques are few and far between. Mass retailers may stock size ranges that quietly top out at an F cup, if you’re lucky. Beyond that, options shrink and prices skyrocket. What should be a functional garment becomes a luxury item. Basic support comes with an entry fee of $100, at least.
“Suddenly you’re scrolling through niche international lingerie brands,” she says. “You’re left wondering if you really need groceries this month.”
Worse, standardised sizing doesn’t exist. A 34E in the UK is not a 34E in the US—and it won’t even be a 34E across two brands in the same mall. In Japan, Korea, and China, sizing systems diverge entirely, often excluding larger cup sizes altogether. Labelling conventions also vary; Japanese sizes often list the cup size before the band size (for example, C75 instead of 75C).
So if you ever want to feel like a cryptographer, try converting your bra size across five different brands.
A Paywall on Movement
And then comes the sports bra—somehow even harder to navigate.
Mainstream activewear brands like Nike and Adidas, along with lingerie labels like Triumph and Wacoal, rarely offer extended sizing in high-impact bras. Bustier women are effectively excluded from functional, accessible sportswear.
Complain, and you’ll be told to “just wear two”—as if that’s a life hack, not a last resort.
For 17-year-old Aisha*, who wears a 32I, the issue came to a head during COVID-19. With gyms closed, she took up jogging near her HDB block—only to find her regular bra couldn’t handle the bounce.
“I thought I’d bruise myself,” she says.
Her search for a better one was a logistical nightmare: international sizing charts, inconsistent reviews, expensive shipping, and weeks of waiting. By the time one fit, six weeks had passed. Her motivation had faded.
“I just wanted to feel strong. Even that felt like a luxury.”
The right bra became a gatekeeper to exercise, to confidence, to movement. When your body isn’t the default, access comes delayed. If at all.
“We tell girls to take care of their bodies,” Aisha says. “But we don’t make it easy for them to do that.”
For schoolgirls, showing up isn’t optional—PE and CCA alone mean at least three days of physical activity a week. If you follow care instructions (hand-wash, air-dry), you’ll need three bras in rotation just to avoid pain or embarrassment.
The cost adds up. So girls adapt—or opt out. Some skip PE. Others bounce uncomfortably in the wrong size, tugging at shirts. A few stop exercising altogether.
“There’s financial assistance for sports equipment,” Aisha adds. “But not for the one thing that decides whether I can show up at all.”
When Appropriate Means Invisible
Bras may be private, but their absence becomes public. They determine who moves freely and who gets left behind.
As adolescence gives way to adulthood, the workplace imposes a new dress code—one cloaked in words like “appropriate” and “professional”.
The anxiety is familiar to 21-year-old Renee*, a final-year student applying for jobs. Tailored fits may signal power on some bodies, but on hers, they invite suspicion.
“I’ve heard it outright—big boobs aren’t professional.”
You may excel at your job, but your wardrobe must silence your body to be seen as competent. What does that say about the tools we rely on to feel ‘professional’?
Minimiser bras aren’t just functional. They suppress. They compress the body into aesthetic norms where large breasts are excessive at best, inappropriate at worst.
“I started wearing binders—the kind that press your chest so firmly that posture stiffens, breath shortens, and skin bruises.”
It’s like wearing a chest clamp, she says. “I don’t breathe properly, but at least no one stares.”
These aren’t aesthetic preferences. They’re avoidance strategies—to deflect stares, to soothe discomfort that isn’t yours.
Plus, they’re expensive. The irony? You pay more to be seen less.
“Containment isn’t comfort—it’s compliance, sold back to us at a premium,” Nicole offers.
The Cost of Discomfort
This is the economics of legibility: when the default body isn’t yours, you fund your own erasure. And if you can’t afford it, you rely on posture. You slouch because hunching makes your boobs look smaller.
Containment comes at a premium. For Amanda*, a 35-year-old mother, it was costly.
She ignored persistent back pain until an MRI revealed a slipped disc—damage her physiotherapist linked to years of poor bra support and posture. She had a discectomy.
Ill-fitting bras compromise more than comfort. They strain muscles, restrict breathing, inflame nerves, and bruise skin.
When support fails, the body pays.
These are silent struggles—seen only in listicles or subreddits like r/bigboobproblems. Outside those spaces, there’s little understanding.
In Singapore, even the climate is an adversary. In theory, tropical weather invites breathability.
But for busty women, the heat is claustrophobic. Bras double as saunas. Synthetic fabrics trap sweat. Damp straps dig in. Underwires heat up.
The body enters a contradiction. The heat urges undress; society demands concealment. You do both—layering and peeling, carrying and hiding. Between climate and culture, the body becomes a negotiation.
Comfort rarely makes the cut.
The Body as Afterthought
But does our retail landscape accommodate this tension?
Mainstream fashion cloaks itself in the language of universality. Brands like Uniqlo, Zara, and Cotton On position their collections as ‘for all’ and ‘for everyone’.
But in practice, these garments presume linear body measurements. This isn’t just a commercial oversight. It’s a design failure rooted in history. Most sizing systems still rely on anthropometric data from the 1940s to 1960s, when the ‘ideal’ body was codified around smaller, straighter, and culturally narrower lines.
While some Western labels have revised their grading patterns in response to body diversity, many Asian markets continue to import sizing assumptions wholesale, failing to recalibrate for local proportions or physiological variation.
Bustier women are forced to size up even when the shoulder and waist fit.
“If it fits my chest, it swallows the rest of me. I don’t look stylish—I look like I borrowed someone else’s clothes.”
Brands often use a “grading up” or “shrink-it-and-pink-it” model—scaling straight-size or men’s patterns—without rethinking proportions.
The result? Anatomically incoherent garments: sleeves that drag, hips that balloon, breasts that never land where they’re supposed to.
You end up wearing the garment’s failure, not yours. You don’t get to explore personal style—you choose from what doesn’t reject you.
“Forget clothes made for me,” Renee says. “Some stores here don’t even carry sizes beyond L. And don’t get me started on the conspiracy of the perpetually ‘out of stock’ bra sizes.”
But when garments don’t fit, are you expected to tailor everything just to wear what others get off the rack?
“The resignation becomes muscle memory. You scan for cleavage when you lean, button stress when you sit, sweat patches, underboob, sideboob, bra strap visibility.”
Retail doesn’t just fail young women—it blames them for needing to be served. And slowly, blame gets internalised—not as a failure of design, but as a flaw in your body.
“And then you’re called fat. Or unfeminine. Or lazy,” Aisha says. “As if the bad fit is a moral failing.”
Too Grown, Too Soon
Hyper sexualisation reveals a deeper cultural unease: discomfort with bodies that deviate from the norm in Singapore. The busty figure doesn’t blend into social homogeneity, and so, it is cast as deviant.
A fitted top is “asking for attention.” A slightly open collar becomes “too much.”
But what happens when your chest grows before your confidence does?
For many busty girls, innocence is stripped before it’s ever shed—not because they act older or dress suggestively, but because their bodies are treated as already having exited girlhood.
Teachers warn. Parents pull aside. Aunties glance, then comment. Childhood clothes become ‘inappropriate’ on the same frame, altered only by puberty’s timing.
The innocence tax isn’t just paid in moments of embarrassment or overcorrection. It’s paid in the slow erosion of trust in institutions, in adults, in oneself.
You’re read not just as feminine, but too feminine—deliberate, provocative, performative.
To escape that script, many girls retreat into oversized clothes: T-shirts, hoodies, shapeless silhouettes. But concealment doesn’t neutralise attention. It’s recoded as masculine, as deviant, as non-conforming.
Nicole talks about the tension:
“When I wore baggy clothes, it was ‘Why do you dress like a boy? Are you a lesbian?’ But the moment I tried to wear something more revealing to overcompensate, it became ‘Wah, very daring today. Trying to find a boyfriend, is it?’ and ‘Careful, later men will get excited.’”
The result is internalised censorship. A young woman walks into a room, scans for judgment. Adjusts her neckline. Rethinks her posture. Wonders if her body has betrayed her again. The most powerful control doesn’t announce itself—it trains you to regulate yourself.
“There is an entire commercial ecosystem devoted to amplifying smaller busts—push-up bras, plunge styles, contour enhancements,” Nicole says, half-laughing.
“But the same infrastructure for larger chests is built on restraint.”
You become fluent in defensive fashion—editing yourself before anyone else can.
“You learn to apologise before anyone says a word,” Aisha says, like it’s a habit etched into memory.
Womanhood on Trial
Who gets to take up space—and who’s asked to shrink?
Clothing becomes control, reinforcing pressure to conform. But it’s not just about clothes. It’s about self-expression, body acceptance, and who gets to exist—unapologetically—in public.
When busty women speak up, they’re dismissed as dramatic—or accused of bragging. Talk about the discomfort or bring up breast reduction, you’ll hear:
“Must be nice to have that problem. You should be grateful.”
“Why would you ruin your body?”
“Plenty of women would kill for that.”
“You looked better before.”
As if pain is a luxury. As if discomfort must be justified against someone else’s desire. As if your body isn’t yours to change—only to be admired, judged, preserved.
But smaller-breasted women aren’t winning either.
They’re told they have it easier. No back pain. No bouncing. No leering stares on the MRT.
“I wear a 32AA,” says Jasmine, a 25-year-old software engineer. “Most bras don’t even come in my size. When they do, they’re either aggressively padded or made for preteens—frills, bright colours, patterns.”
In a culture obsessed with calibration, even absence becomes spectacle.
She puts it bluntly: “You feel like you’re failing femininity in a quieter way. Like you’re not pulling your weight as a woman.”
If large breasts are coded as excessive, small ones are framed as lacking—unfeminine, in need of enhancement.
The message is the same: your body, as it is, is not quite right.
A Body at Rest
The truth is, breasts don’t need to be large to be policed. They just need to exist. Whether you’re overflowing or barely filling your bra, your chest becomes a screen for projection, desire, shame, or judgment.
As long as you have them, your breasts are never really yours.
Some days, you reclaim. ‘Some mornings, I leave with my nipples outlined under a threadbare tank—daring the world to look. Other days, I layer up or flatten myself into safety,” Nicole says.
And then, sometimes, a flicker of clarity. The realisation that your breasts don’t belong to your teachers, your boss, or the auntie on the MRT. Not to dress codes, not to algorithms, not to strangers’ imaginations.
So you keep negotiating. That your body can be yours, not a symbol, not a spectacle, just yours.
The private joy of being braless at home isn’t just about comfort. It’s about not being read. Not being measured.
“In those quiet moments, the body stops performing. It just exists,” Jasmine says softly.
“Is that the deal in Singapore? I get peace, but only if no one sees me? And how long do I have to call that enough?”
