I Survived The First Bra Shopping With My Daughter! Did You?

This week, my daughter and I went shopping for her first bra.

Taking your daughter to buy a first bra is one of the first “womanly” experiences a mother and daughter share (if you don’t count shoe shopping).  I have both anticipated and feared this moment for years.

Izzy is almost eleven so I knew it was coming.  Last summer she went to sleep away camp and she would write me letters that said “Camp is fun.  I need some more stamps.  Oh, and I do NOT want a bra.”  Her preemptive protests confirmed to me that there were indeed mumblings of “bras” in her cabin.  There was no denying that she and her friends were standing at the threshold of womanhood, peeking in and giggling their butts off. 

I won’t lie.  I’m not ready for Izzy to grow up.  I’ve been in love with this “girl” for 10 years and I don’t take well to change.  Of course, all the talk about how much she’s going to hate me once she’s a teenager doesn’t help either.  But it’s my job as a mom to help smooth the path through adolescence and I really want to do it right.  No pressure.  No embarrassment.  No mortification.  Not like my path through adolescence, which was practically paved with embarrassment and mortification.  No.  MY daughter would be comfortable with her body, and most importantly, unashamed to talk with me about it.

So for the past year when she blurted the unprompted announcement that she did NOT want a first bra, I limited my responses to “I would never make you get a bra.” and “Whatever. It’s no big deal.”  Okay, occasionally, I’d put out there, “Wow, I love my bra.  It’s so great.  I am sooooo comfy right now.”  But she’d just look up at me blinking and reiterate …”Mommy, I am not wearing a bra.”  Yeah.  She was on to me.

So when last week Izzy said, “Mommy.  We need to go bra shopping.”  I held onto the countertop and tried not to pass out.  I said “uh..huh” and just kept cutting apples – popping a slice into my mouth now and then to reinforce my nonchalant attitude about it all.  She announced she was the only one left in the grade who didn’t have one and she added very dramatically, “Mommy.  It’s time.”

So off we went - to the mall.  She boldly took me by the hand to her chosen bra shopping destination where she tried on her first bra.   As she pulled it on she practically shouted “This IS so comfy!”  and I said.  “I know!  See??”

She picked out a bunch of bras; two white, two nude and one with a teeny tiny bit of padding (her idea, not mine).  I sucked it all up with a calculated coolness, internally dying.

Then she picked out a bra with little green smiling frogs all over it and ran back to the changing room to show it to me.  “Look! It has FROGGIES!  I love it!”

It was cute.  It was kid-ish, and it felt like the universe was throwing me a bone.  Sending me a message that she while she was growing up, she was still my little girl and I didn’t have to say goodbye just yet.

We bought her bounty of bras and she proudly marched home to Skype all her friends with the big news.

But I was so proud of her.  And I was proud of me.  This girl of mine was confident, comfortable with her body, and completely unembarrassed to share the experience with me.  Indeed, my girl was becoming a woman. 

A frog-bra wearing woman, but a woman nonetheless. 

And I could definitely live with that.

How did your first bra shopping experience pan out? t for years. What mother hasn’t?