Hello everyone,

I've found the statement "It's rare for an amab female to grow bigger than a B cup" on this site multiple times, and it seems to be accepted as a general truth, and so I am wondering if this is indeed true or if improper bra fitting methods are common. I take a US 28DDD (UK 28F) and am close to flat. Is it possible that people are wearing overly large bands or unfortunately believing that their cups, which are too small, fit correctly?

Does anyone have insight on this?

A DDD cup would mean a breast measurement 6 inches greater than the band size.
So 28" band size and 34" over the breast.  That's hardly flat!

I'm much larger.  46" band and 50" over the breasts so a 46D. 

Yes; my underbust is 28" and my bust, 34.5". Through sister sizing (due to the general unavailability of 28 and 30 bands) I can deal with a 32D. Perhaps it's due to shallow tissue, but my breasts seem very far from impressive (especially when cold).

  We've had extensive discussions around here about bra sizing/measuring and how commonly it is done wrong, in many cases by the retail fitters, and how many of the measuring schemes tend not to work very well for transwomen.  It certainly often comes down to what actually looks and feels best via a lot of trial and error.

  That "B-cup max" phrase seems to have become an accepted factual statistic just because it has been repeated so many times over and because prospective transitioners are encouraged to be "realistic" in their expectations.  There are loads of people on Susan's with natural development far beyond a B, and often rather quickly too.  That said, after 19 months on estrogen I am now a 34B.  Very few 34-band bras fit my required cup-spacing though, and I'm happily wearing two 34C padded bras with a slight bit of room to spare because everything else about them is perfect.  I have no idea if I will continue to develop.

  BTW, you are very gifted to have such a small ribcage!

I'm 34C now, close to 34D ( in US, in UK i'm 34D now )and they are still growing while i'm not gaining weight.
But i got help from my cis friends with proper bra fitting.

I'm convinced the B cup myth is due to a) repetition and b) misunderstanding of how the sister sizing works. You clearly get the idea, but not everyone does. Back a few years when this story started, the average cis female size was 36C; the average size of a woman with a rib cage just an inch or two bigger (as is not uncommon in trans women) would be 38B, and bingo, there's the legendary B cup. In other words, even IF it was true, it may have been a confusion over sizing making it *seem* as though trans women ended up smaller than the cis average.

And by sister sizing a 32D is 34C or 36B... which is not overly huge.

(Then there's the fact that in cheap bras I wear a 42DDD but was professionally fitted in expensive Wacoal bras as 38DD... so it's no wonder women often end up in the wrong size, when it's so hard to determine what the "right" size is and it varies by manufacturer and style!)

  I guess we should take a "bra survey" and chart the data with sister sizes in common rows or columns.  That way the common breast volumes will be much easier to see.  It won't eliminate the problems with people wearing the wrong size inadvertently or intentionally but it should be pretty accurate overall, enough certainly to show what's most common and the overall distribution.  Unfortunately I doubt there's an easy way to automate the generation of such a table though.

I think a survey chart would be very interesting.  Especially if we used actually measurements instead of bra size, which can be incorrect and varies from one brand to another.  Things like band, bust and also semi-circumference, so volume could be estimated.