No Qs…Ha!  I laugh in the face of this Q-less challenge.

Onward and upward, quickly.  Oops.  I mean quietly – rats.  Let’s just get on with it then. Challenge courtesy of The Mad Grad Student’s Missing Letter Mondays challenge.

My stream of consciousness rant for today:

You know what I’m dying to know?  What’s so freaking impossible about making a sports bra? Frankly, I was stunned to learn that the first sports bra was designed by a woman (Lisa Lindahl, what were you thinking?!).  She was a jogger, so while she was probably in shape I doubt she had Houdini-like skills when it came to getting out of these damn things.  Or getting into them, for that matter.

I’ve often found myself literally stuck, mid process, while struggling into one of my sports bras. It’s a simple enough start – over the head, one arm up and through – and then you hit the dilemma.  You have to start shimmying that thing down your back or you’ll end up with a super strong band of reinforced fabric bunched up around your shoulder blades.  Fabric you can’t reach, which you know if you’ve ever tried to scratch an itch located precisely between your shoulders.  You need to start pulling the bra down, except if you don’t put your second arm through now then the tension is too great to create an armhole to use.

So you end up using a hybrid approach – first arm through, shimmy fabric 1/2 inch down in back, other hand through second armhole, shimmy fabric 1/2 inch more, put whole second arm through only to find it’s stuck at an awkward angle above your head.  Now you’re listing 20 degrees starboard, hand flapping uselessly above your head as you wonder if this is the time you’ll have to call for help before you lose all feeling in your limb.

If the stars and planets are aligned you’ll manage to get the damn thing on and breathe a sigh of satisfaction.  (But not too deep a sigh ’cause, you know, you’re all jammed up in this undergarment.)  You might think you’re home free, a sense of relief I haven’t experienced since the first time I wore a sports bra.  Because now I remember that there comes a point when you have to take the freaking thing off, which means throwing this whole process into reverse, a situation that’s a whole lot trickier once you’re exhausted and sweaty from exercising.

Now I’m not what you’d call a busty gal, but even I recognize how crucial this item of clothing is for any activity more strenuous than your average day.  The sports bra can be a massive pain in the neck shoulder back ass, but have you ever tried exercising in a regular bra?  I’m not talking about a super fancy, lacy, special event piece of lingerie – just a plain old, run of the mill, picked it up at the outlet bra.  There’s shifting and pinching and (if you’re really unlucky) the very real possibility of a boob popping out at an unfortunate moment.

And while boob explosions might seem like a plus to some, to most of us it’s a major faux pas in the public arena.  Which leads us back to sports bras.

The girls rely on a good sports bra to keep them in check, so this piece of athletic clothing isn’t really optional.  But seriously…there isn’t a better system than this?!