Giving it a try in English...

A few weeks ago, denocte of Kurvendiskussionen decided on offering a translation or at least an English summary of her postings so people who do not understand any German could get an impression what her writings are all about. This - and finally joining Twitter - made me reconsider...

When I started this blog, I was very conscious of the lack of information on bra fitting on the German part of the internet. Apart from Busenfreundinnen forum, which is - as you might know - a message board dedicated to online bra fitting (For more information check out Beckie's interview with Joanna, founder and admin of BF at Busts4Justice: We love Busenfreundinnen), there was literally nothing on the German web that was remotely helpful when looking for a well-fitting bra. 

Compared to the UK or Poland, Germany is still a bra wasteland - most shops carry cup sizes from A to D; E and F-cups are still exotic and G and H-cups even more so. The same goes for band sizes. A 32 band is regarded as supertiny. As a result, most women who need "exotic sizes" end up buying very expensive bras (popular brands for "problem customers" above a D-cup are Chantelle, Prima Donna, Empreinte, Anita or Triumph) which don't fit properly. You all know the signs: band too loose, cups too small, poking wires and straps digging into shoulders. But most women think, this is how bras are - more of a torture instrument than a comfortable and supporting piece of functional wear.

While Busenfreundinnen forum is a great place to get advice on bras and fitting, I thought there might be people who do not have the energy of joining an online community and prefer to follow a blog offering similar information and news. As I already had written a lot of stuff for Busenfreundinnen, I decided it was time for my own little project. 

I also briefly considered writing in English, but then, Germans are not particularily open to other languages. It's for example not very common to watch films in the original language version - something that is quite natural in other European countries like the Netherlands, in Sweden or Denmark. This, of course, is also due to circumstances; there are many more German native speakers than for example Dutch, so everything is translated and sychronised, and you don't have to bother with English. If you don't want to, you can surf the internet, go to the movies or consume other products of pop culture without having to know a word of English.  So the foreign language is still a barrier for many people, which is especially obvious when it comes to ordering online in the UK, a topic we discuss more or less daily at Busenfreundinnen.net.

However, in short, my decision based on many Germans being not able resp. comfortable with reading English - and while last spring there were already quite a few English blogs out there, I did not know one German-language-blogger who wrote about bra fitting. (denocte started at the same time as me. It was really cool not having to do it alone.)

So what made me change my mind?

To be honest, I feel a little lonely, all by myself. I realised that - while I can read and understand all of those great blogs out there - no one of the international bra fitting community has even the slightest clue of what I'm doing here. Simply because the only way of reading my blog would be translating it via Google Translator or a similar tool. Which I do quite a lot with Stanikomania! for example, but the results are often... well... hilarious.  I'm thinking that I could at least give it a try and post some English versions of my musings. I'm not sure if I'll manage translating every posting but we'll see.

After this pretty long opening speech, let me introduce myself properly at last: 

Hello to you all, dearest non-German-speakers, visiting drueber & drunter.

I am george, which is a nickname inspired by Enid Blytons Famous Five. I live in Berlin, Germany and I'm a little paranoid about privacy and the internet, so you won't find too much personal information on these pages. I am no lingerie addict but more interested in bra fitting and its positive side effects like better body image, an anti-normative approach to beauty and sizing etc. 

When I discovered Busenfreundinnen.net nearly three years ago I was in awe:  I had been struggling with bras since puberty, not being able to find one that actually fit. Usually I ended up with the largest cup size available and a bandsize calculated according to the plus 4 method. Over the years I had gotten closer to a reasonable size, already wearing a 36FF/G when arriving at the forum. Still, learning about bra fitting was a huge step for me. While I never had been particularly selfconscious about my body, finding the right bra size - and realising there even was such a thing like a fitting bra for me - was extremely liberating. As was meeting other women with the same or similar problems.

Within days I was hooked - I spent hours on reading every single posting on the message board, browsing for bras on the internet, researching sizes and styles, observing the bras and breasts of women on the street... And I wanted to spread the word. Since most of my female friends were not really responsive to my missionary zeal, I delved into the online community, discussed fit problems and online fitting methods, styles and breast forms, concepts of beauty and self-love and in the end integrated bra fitting in my feminist perspective which - in the very beginning - I had regarded as being something different entirely.

A couple of years and several thousand postings later, I decided on opening my own little place on the world wide web - for the reasons described above.
So, I pondered over a name and finally chose drueber & drunter which translates into sth. like above and beneath and refers to clothing and underwear but is also an expression like "higgledy-piggledy". I was not really sure what I wanted to write about, so it kind of fit my rather chaotic concept. ;-)

drueber & drunter was planned to be a blog with several authors, the "Brabarellas". At the moment, there is only one active though: the lovely MiaRose who joined the blog in December and has written quite a few shop-reviews and postings on bra fitting vocabulary since. :)

She will reveal some information on her person any day now.

For my measurements and some random information about me visit the about george-page on this blog.

If you've got further questions, do not hesitate to ask. Post a comment, write to drueberunddrunter ät gmx dot net or twitter @drueberdrunter.
(I'm not on Facebook though, which I absolutely loathe - for a number of reasons.)

Upcoming blog posts will be titled "[English] Something something", so you can find them easily, as well as tagged with the search label english. I decided against bi-lingual postings which IMO are a little confusing. For reasons of structure and readability I will also place English duplicates of German postings after a jump break.

Yours sincerely ;)
george