Ewa Michalak SM Beżyk Reviewed and Swooping and Scooping
Hello readers! Its been a little while since I posted a review and I have quite a few bras I want to write about, so hopefully this will be the first of many reviews to come in the next little while. I have a couple reasons for my recent lack of blog presence. Number 1: Pokemon X did, and continues to, consume my life. I’m working on completing my Pokedex, training up some of my favourite Pokes for battle, and of course…
… making my trainer as stylish as possible (This isn’t my spite actually. I’ll see if I can get some images of her for you all sometime. Spoilers: she looks like a detective and it is the best).
Reason number 2 for my absence: My boobs have been behaving strangely. A lot of my bras have been feeling too small, but a size up is too large. I was getting a bit annoyed and stressed about all of my pretties fitting me poorly, because my boobs didn’t even look larger to me. I was wondering I had somehow changed shape, and now I needed a new style of bra to suit me. But it turns out the answer was quite silly, and very simple. Let’s begin the review, and all will be revealed soon.
Ewa Michalak SM Bezyk , 30F
I still seem to measure 26 inches around my ribcage (27 inhaled), but I’m finding regular 28 bands comfortable these days as opposed to tight 28s and 26s. This means in a lot of Ewa Michalak bras, I now opt for a 30 instead of a 28 (though exceptions to this rule do exist). The SM Beżyk in a 30 feels like perfection around my ribcage. It hits the sweet spot of just tight enough to feel secure without feeling restricted. The cups are nearly perfect. My smaller side is as comfortable as could be, but I would like the cups to come up slightly higher on my larger side. All in all, I’m happy with the fit, and the lower cut of the bra and near perfect match for my skin make it a perfect “solution” bra to wear with trickier clothing. It’s especially handy under my light coloured button up shirts, it’s completely invisible under them!
One of my favourite things about this bra are the straps. They’re narrow enough to look attractive and thick enough to be comfortable- perfect! The way the straps are attached to the cups is also a great little feature. The thicker piece of fabric where the straps meet the cups really help to pull everything inward and upward. The shape is fairly minimized, especially compared to other Ewa Michalak styles I’ve tried in the past. It’s not as supportive as bras like my Cleo Marcie or Miss Mandalay Paige, but those two bras provide some serious anchorage. The support I get in this bra is pretty remarkable considering how low cut and lacy it is! It’s a bra I’m really happy to have in my collection, and bust out whenever I need it to disappear into my skin or if I just want to feel damn comfy- did I mention that this bra is damn comfy?
Profile shot of my larger side. Still looks great even though I’d like it to come up with the eensiest bit higher
The wires, as you can see, are refreshingly narrow. I’ve been sporting a lot of Masquerade and Cleo styles lately, so to put on an EM bra again is like a breath of fresh air. I did find the wires uncomfortable on the first wear, but since this this has become one of my favourite most comfortable bras. So just keep in mind that you may experience some discomfort on the first wear, but it does not persist (I have a friend who also ordered an SM bra and experienced the same discomfort for a couple of wears, and it went away for her as well).
So to quickly recap some of the main features of this bra:
- Narrow wires
- Supportive straps
- Forward yet minimized, rounded shape
- Band has four adjustment settings- lots of life in this bra! Closes with two hook-and-eyes in a 30F
- Sturdy lace- not stretchy
- Low-cut, open cups. Basically fits like a demi bra
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So now that the review is out of the way, let’s discuss swooping and scooping. As most of us know, this is when you scoop all the tissue from your armpit area into the cups, so as to help properly fill out your cups and aid in tissue migration (getting the breast tissue out from your armpits and onto the front of your body). But is there such a thing as swooping and scooping too much? My answer is yes, I think there is. Here are some pictures of myself in the SM Beżyk when I’ve scooped everything from my armpits and sides into the cups:
As you can see, the fit is not looking so great when I scoop everything from my armpits into the cups. I’d like to say right now that you should ALWAYS scoop all of your breast tissue into the cups, but the issue I was having that was complicating my fit so much was that I was scooping skin and fat into the cups, not breast tissue. Allow me to demonstrate my incredibly stretchy skin that was throwing off the fit of my bras. Ladies and gentleman prepare…
Elastigirl!
It’s not very uncommon for people of Scottish/Irish decent to have stretchier skin than the average person. I’ve actually had friends who can stretch their skin even further than this by a considerable amount. Good party trick? Or creepy? Both? Both. Basically, all this stretchy skin was ending up in the cups, and making it near impossible to get a proper fit. In a 28FF the wires would be too short and the cups would overflow. In a 28G the wires would either be *okay*, too tall or wide, and the cups would gape. The crease in my skin in the three-quarter view picture is just my skin stretching into the cup, not breast tissue.
My point is that there are likely a minority of us who fully swooping and scooping won’t work for. My current method is to put on my bras while bending over, and just scooping the rest of the breast tissue I can find into the cups, being careful not to scoop all my underarm skin into the cups. I find that it’s easier to differentiate between the two while bent over as opposed to standing up. I have found my bras to be so much more comfortable and look a lot more attractive using this method, and the wires no longer pinch my skin! I doubt this swooping and scooping study will apply to many people, but hopefully the few who it does apply to see this and it helps increase the comfort of their bras.
So remember folks, swoop and scoop responsibly, and check out these kittens.
-Windie
nice, I was just recently looking at the SM style from Ewa and from the pictures, it seems to me it could work pretty well on my close-set boobs, a problem I always have to deal with, especially in unpadded bras. it looks like the wires are really close in the middle on your photos as well, is that true? I don’t have a possibility to try it out in my country (even though we border with Poland, how crazy is that?!) but I can order it so I would like to see if it’s worth it.
Hey! The wires are pretty close set (they measure half an inch), so an SM bra may indeed work for you 🙂
Oh wow, I tried stretching the same part of my skin and it’s a huge difference there between you and me! 😛 I can stretch it out maximum 1 cm, so I guess I have very firm skin (but maybe you do too? Not too sure if firm equals less stretchy or if it has no correlation). When stretching that much it even feels a little strained and it hurts a bit. Wow… You bring out a totally new factor to me. More women need to see this just to make sure 🙂
Wow, I’m of Irish descent (so my passport informs me! 🙂 ) and I’m jealous you can do that stretchy arm thing! I really like this bra, I’m not really much of a fan of moulded bras, but this is a bra that is pale enough to match my skintone too!
Please upload your Pokémon character too!
I guess I don’t really know if I have firm skin? I can stretch it far, but it bounces back without issue. Not sure if that makes it firm or not though 😛
And thanks, I hope it helps some of those trying to figure out why their bras feel funny, and at very least begins a conversation about swooping and scooping!
I’m so glad you’re tackling this issue. I have the opposite issue of lack of stretchy skin than tends to pile on to itself. My fat and muscle are extremely firm, so often what isn’t actually my breast tissue ends up getting scooped in anyway because it texture wise, it’s identical to my breast tissue. I only recently figured out that that wasn’t actually breast tissue because of my birth control messing up my cycle and noticing the difference in sensation when I feel my breast tissue in comparison to my fatty/muscular side tissue. When my arm is down it looks like I have an extremely wide root. I cannot do the push test because there is no line of demarcation. But when I lift my arms all the way up I can clearly see where my breasts are, because my muscle/fat whatever gets all stretched out but my breast tissue doesn’t. Does this make sense? I think this probably isn’t a problem of the minority. I see too wide wires and bras sitting too low everywhere now. It’s a whole other view of bra fit that I was blinded by the all fat tissue should be in the cup dichotomy. Having only breast tissue in their is far more comfortable and attractive on me.
What a super interesting post, I love when another piece of the bra fit puzzle falls into place! I also have very firm fat & muscle so Windie’s example picture was UTTERLY out of the range of my imagination haha. But my root also looks incredibly wide in middling-width wires with my arms down, considering that it all empties out when I lift my arms, or stretch, or do anything that reveals that the “boobs” were actually just strangely thick/firm skin tissues that happen to sit near my breasts as well.
This only exacerbates the problem of fitters trying to put me in strangely sized bras, and 34s when I should be wearing 30s :p I am not vanity sizing lady, your bras do not hold on to my breasts!
That’s interesting, because I’ve figured out that I have been wearing too small of a band, causing my wires to be more easily distorted and being pushed down by my dense fat/muscle tissue. I need longer bands and narrower wires now. This meant for me sizing down 1-2 volumes and sizing up two band sizes. I need tall wires to keep my breasts separate from my fat/muscle.
Hmm. The wire distortion can definitely happen if a bra is incompatible with your rib area. Usually by the time that is happening with me I can’t even get the bra hooked around me :p But perhaps it was just a problem with the brand and not the band?
I have found that many manufacturers think heavier (higher cup size) breasts automatically need wider, taller wires. Then the same volume in a smaller cup has lower, narrower wires. For example a 30H Andorra was a big mistake on me, yet I can wear a 34FF and the wires are almost perfect. However I have to wear the bra on the tightest hook and then some, as it quickly stretches out. Even 34FF in some older styles was still tall & wide but it looks like Panache is adjusting them.
I shouldn’t *have* to wear a bigger band unless the smaller one is distorting, and now I don’t really anymore – the Polish brands, as mentioned in the post, tend to already have the narrow wires. Cleo sometimes too! And then I can magically see where my breast root is, instead of compensating for the odd structural ideas of the bra. I also need a longer band in *proportion* to the cups.. I bet there are bras that have naturally tall, narrow wires for you as well!
Oh, oh, me too! I’ve been puzzling over this for months! When my arm is down it looks like I have a fairly wide root; if I lift my arm up my breast is clearly defined and the root is pretty narrow. And that tissue definitely isn’t muscular. Its just fat and probably some extra skin (big weight gain followed by big weight loss). Maybe I need to try scooping and swooping a little less. There is always plenty of tissue that I can jam into a bra but maybe theres more than i’ve been assuming that just ISN’T boob.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndrome
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Two things – yay a bra blogging gamer! You can make your sprite stylish in X?? Ah ha I REALLY need to get it now. Stupid lack of time.
Secondly this revelation about irish/Scottish people is amazing to me! My husband is both and his skin pulls like several inches from his face! How odd.. I also don’t know how you ever figured out your issue but glad you did!
In retrospect, I have no idea how I thought of this either 😛 I too am glad that I did.
And it’s so fun to customize your sprite in 6th gen. I spent an embarrassing amount of poke-dollars on clothes and haircuts.