A Grand Return

Outta Leftfield: Learning the secrets of ‘The Bra Whisperer’ an uplifting experience
Published: Tuesday, September 21, 2010

He's back, folks! A full column (something not seen for months) AND a blog entry on the same day. And this promises to be a gem. Morsch talking about bras, presumably breasts, and presumably women? I'm in.

When it comes to basic bra knowledge, men are at a disadvantage. What we do know can be broken down into three simple categories: (1) Uh. (2) Well. (3) Hmmm.

Oh, it's so TRUE! Men know nothing. That's what I appreciate most about this column - it's frank (yet amusing) honesty on the facts of life. The facts of life according to "Sit-Com Writing for Dummies," yes, but facts nonetheless.

Fortunately, I am now more of an expert on bras after having spent some time last week in King of Prussia with nationally known bra fitter Susan Nethero — also known as “The Bra Whisperer” — who really knows her stuff having been trained by Queen of England’s royal bra fitter.

This is a terrible sentence. Terrible. Try reading it out loud in one breath - you can't do it. What a life this man leads. A bra-fitting seminar one week, a rodeo the next.

Which begs the question, “The Queen has a royal bra fitter?”

The real question here is why Morsch was there. Other than the fact that he's a lusty perv, of course.

Still, there are worse ways to kill an hour on a Wednesday afternoon than sitting around and talking about bras, and um … other things that fall into that category.

Wait, mystery solved - Morsch was there to be fitted for his OWN bra, a.k.a. "bro," a.k.a. "manzier."

“Hey, what’s your bra size?” I said to The Blonde Accountant on the phone when I called to tell her about my appointment to talk with Susan.

As usual with these hilarious husband/wife conversations, I'm quite sure that this one never took place.

“Why do you need to know that?” she asked.

“Because I’m going to interview ‘The Bra Whisperer’ and your bra size might be information I need to have for that conversation,” I said.

“You … are … NOT … going … to put … my bra size … in the paper,” she shot back.

Now I've never been married. But wouldn't a spouse's bra size be easy to obtain? They're in the laundry, they're in drawers, they're in the hamper... it seems like that's the kind of information that a husband would have.

I bet she’d tell the Queen’s royal bra fitter her cup size if she had the chance.

Gross.

Still, I understand the need for discretion with this subject matter, especially if the information is given to the Royal Knuckleheaded Husband who would think it was funny if that information were revealed to the public … at least for as long as it took him to set up a cot in the garage.

Dumb husband joke staple: being forced to sleep in a remote area by an angry wife. How often does this actually happen?

Susan was in town for the opening of a new store {intimacy} in the King of Prussia Mall, her 12th such women’s fancy underwear store across the country. (By the way, the little brackets around {intimacy} and the lowercase “i” on the word are how it’s supposed to be spelled.)

Shameless Promotion Alert! Or, at least, it should be. Some day I'd like an explanation of what qualifies as "shameless."

And when it comes to bras, Susan really likes to hold up her end of the conversation. You may have seen her on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Tyra Banks Show,” “The Today Show,” “What Not to Wear” and “How To Look Good Naked” with Carson Kressley, that guy from “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.”

This is at least the second time that Mr. Kressley has been referred to as "that guy from 'QEFTSG'." Again, doesn't really help narrow it down.

In fact, it was Kressley that gave her the moniker “The Bra Whisperer.”

Gay people are legendarily witty.

For the record — and I asked — she doesn’t really whisper to the bras. If she did, I would hope that she would say, “Psssst. Did you know that the Queen has a royal bra fitter? Can you believe that?”

Only Morsch can blend two jokes so lame into one steamy, bubbly crap cocktail.

But she does whisper to her clients.

“What I whisper is, ‘You can feel confident and feel good about yourself, that some of the issues and problems that you had with being able to wear certain styles and certain shapes … that’s all gone away.’ It’s all about confidence,” she said.

That’s the whole theory behind the {intimacy} brand, that Susan and her staff — who don’t use tape measures to determine bust sizes — want to advise women on how to get the right comfort, shape and style of bra, which leads to confidence.

So this isn't so much a humor column as it is a commercial for this woman's stores. Surprise!

Fortunately, Susan has a fabulous sense of humor when it comes to her chosen profession. And she likes to yuk it up a bit when talking about it. (You can go to www.myintimacy.com for all the non-yukable information.)

Two things must end - the constant promotion of artists, restaurants, musicians, etc; and the phrase "yuk it up." There are a million ways to say "laugh about" without saying that.

“Women can have great bras that give them great support and do their job and they can enjoy looking and feeling their best every day,” said Susan. “So that’s why we enjoy what we do. And we do laugh and giggle about it.”

Among the many things I didn’t know about bras — including the size worn by The Blonde Accountant — is that in the United States, bra sizes range from A, B, C, D, DD, Triple-D and even Quad-D. But in Europe — and for all I know there are royal bra fitters running around all over that continent — the sizes are D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K.

That's a lot of dashes. Morsch seems particularly enamored with the "royal bra fitter" joke. He keeps going back to the well on that one, and it never seems to run dry.

Susan grabbed a size 40K bra out of a drawer in the store and showed it to me. From my limited knowledge of England’s royal family, the 40K looked to be a big too big for the diminutive Queen Elizabeth II. But it would have made a dandy parachute.

Oh, sick! Who thinks about the Queen's bra size?

“Breasts can weigh anywhere from 10 ounces to 10 pounds each. That’s a lot of volume,” said Susan.

Feel free to insert your own “cup runneth over” joke there. All of the ones I could think of couldn’t really be printed in a family newspaper.

The obscene lack of comedy here shouldn't be fit for print. But I digress. Morsch makes a good point - where are all the lame boob-related puns he should be making?

Until I met Susan, the only thing I knew about bras was that Playtex made something called a Cross Your Heart bra back in the 1960s when I was a kid. According to Susan, that bra has been around for four decades and is still one of the Top 10 bras in America.

There is another thing I didn’t know, that there were actually nine other bra brands in America.

This seems like a random bit of information to stick at the end of the column, doesn't it? Maybe he couldn't find a way to slip it in where it would actually make sense.

All in all, I enjoyed talking with Susan. She’s a good sport and has a delightful approach to her life’s work.

I am dead serious when I say that Morsch could interview Ted Bundy and come away with something nice to say about him. "He may have slain numerous women with his bare hands, but he slayed me with his lighthearted quips and delightful approach to death row."

And I now know a little bit more about bras than I used to, which means the next time the topic comes up in casual conversation, I won’t feel like … such a boob.

I love the ellipsis before the "boob" pun, as though Morsch thinks we will savor that extra anticipation of his knee-slapper.