Why is there a man on our blog about boobs? I’ll give you a hint: you met him on Hourglassy on February 9, 2010.
“29,” he answered.
“No one thinks you look that old, do they?” I asked.
“No one thinks I’m a guy,” he replied.
This is JJ, the brains and passion behind Bratabase, the most thoughtfully designed database for matching a woman’s unique breast size and shape with the right bra. Since you couldn’t join me when I met him in July, I’m doing the next best thing and telling you about our meeting.
First, I didn’t need to worry about what to wear. Either JJ has perfected the sidelong boob glance, or he’s seen so many amazing breasts that mine didn’t warrant notice. Bratabase now has well over 6000 bra entries recorded on its site, and JJ reviews each submission, including the photographs. He admits that he originally joined a breast-oriented forum in 1999 because of the photos, so he definitely doesn’t mind this aspect of his hobby.
Fortunately for us, JJ didn’t become a creepy lurker. Instead, he became fascinated with the potential for bra fitting data to help women. You can read more about JJ’s evolution to Bratabase coder in this Bra Stop interview with him earlier this year. Suffice it to say, he’s come a long way from comparing a bunch of bras that he bought on eBay against each other on his bedroom floor.
JJ is working with data from bras actually available in the marketplace. He isn’t depending on specs provided by manufacturers or a special algorithm. Because of this, he can tell immediately if something seems off with a newly added bra–either the owner has measured it incorrectly or something went wrong in production–and flag it for removal from the database. He has even discovered bras with misprinted sizes. Size misprints are “not common but more than you would expect”, and they occur in some popular brands more than the others. There is even one particular Freya DDD bra that is his nemesis. Ask him to explain in the comments if you’d like more details.
The biggest lesson he has learned so far? Without knowing the brand, a cup size is meaningless.
JJ told me that he’ll ride his scooter around Lima, Peru, solving Bratabase problems in his head. His most labor-intensive improvements are not even visible to Bratabase users. For instance, it can take a month to restructure the back end just to add one new button to the front end. Some of his recent improvements to the site have been adding a band stretchiness feature and the ability to size across systems. He has also added new social features, including the ability to follow certain contributors.
Here are two things that I especially appreciate about JJ:
- Perhaps because he’s a guy, he’s hyper aware of the potential for creepy lurkers on Bratabase. This is why he has implemented a reputation system, privacy settings, and watermarks on the photos.
- Despite being a guy, he really listens. He constantly seeks feedback from the site’s most active users, and he frequently consults with highly respected members of sites like Balkonetka and Thirty-TwoD. He even went out of his way to meet me!
He’ll also listen to you, so get involved! I encourage you to play around with Bratabase and see what it can do for you. Some of its benefits may not be immediately obvious, but don’t let that deter you. Just have fun with it and click away. And if you notice a lack of data for your particular size and shape, help fill the gap with your own contributions.
First of all I would like to thank JJ for his hard work and you for posting this interview. Bratabase is a great source.
But I wanted to mention quite a serious problem there: it seems that some girls include wires width to cup width/depth measurements, and some don’t. So it becomes pretty difficult to figure out, if the bra will fit you without looking to the comparison table and individual measurements (and it’s possible only with popular bras). I think more clear instruction would help a lot.
Hi Malica,
I am so glad you like the site! 😀
The problem you mention is that not all users add all measurements? Or that they are adding them wrong?
In both cases, my hope is that the situation will be addressed as more users enter measurements for the same bra, if everybody makes a small mistake to each side the average should have a somewhat real value and if enough bras are added for the same brand/model/size it would be possible to determine which numbers are totally off so we don’t consider them in calculations. So, more bras in order to fix this 🙂
I completely agree with you about the site needing clearer instructions, and actually users with enough reputation can edit the help pages and bra’s information, I struggle to find more time to be able to work on everything, but yes, documentation has been neglected badly 🙁
I talking about that there are two ways to measure width/depth of the cup: including channel for wires and excluding it. Both ways make sense and difference in results is quite significant (almost cup size).
And it also affects cup separation measurements: you often see something a little less then an inch for bras that has wires that have no distance between them at the top of the central gore (I assume that is because somebody measured width of two wire channels or may be measured at the bottom of the central gore).
Bottom line: not very clear instructions where and how to measure affect measurements introducing small systematic discrepancies.
What is this Freya DDD bra that is his nemesis and why?? Asking because I wear a Freya DDD bra… now I need to know!
I’m tweeting him now to get him to answer. I have a vague memory of his explanation, but I’d rather it be in his words.
Hi C!
The problem with that one Freya DDD (and I just saw a 2nd one) is that Freya does not manufacture them >_<, at least not anymore and they are not to be found anywhere now.
Their size chart goes DD and then E, and there are *some* bras out there that say DDD cups in US for the UK E cups, and that is all I have seen, I am left wondering if for those bras an US E cup would be labeled F cup in UK? then Freya would have two US size charts.
Now, Freya is not alone in this, I have cases where Affinitas and Goddress have done that and decided to change their sizing systems at some point leaving bras out there with different sizes.
This makes things really complicated, as to know what a cup really means you need to know the band, the cup, the country system, the brand and also the date!! To know if to which sizing system it belongs :-/
So, the DDD bra is a problem because I don't know quite where to put it without making things ridiculously complicated, is it an E cup? or between an DD and E? for US only but not for UK?
hey JJ, what would you want to say to us women who just can’t help it but find it awkward that Bratabase is a man concentrating on bras? No offence and hard to even believe I find it awkward being from a liberal minded Northern European country and kinda ashamed that I do…
Hi Tina,
I really do understand your position, and I really wish it wasn’t like that because it is weird for me too, weird enough that only a handful of my closest friends know about me doing this. I just wish that it wasn’t like this, but I don’t wish I was a woman or that it was someone else who did it, I just wish that me being a man was an issue. My mom and sister wear horribly fitting bras and don’t have a clue about bra sizing, and I have to live with that >_<
What I can say is that I have been working on Bratabase very hard for the last years, investing most of my spare time, weekends, sleep, nights and money in servers and bras and covering shipping costs, that I would not even think of behaving or doing anything that would jeopardize the site. I really want it to be all it can be and I am happy to put as much as I can on it.
I know that there are other men on the lingerie industry, I would like to know how are they perceived as well, I know that Curvy Kate was started by a man and that many bra companies don't have women exclusive staff.
Even though I currently program and run Bratabase, I have been starting to get help from some users and they are starting to do more and more. If things go well, at some point it may just be me programming and discussing features but a team of people (me and women and who knows, another man? shouldn't matter) "running" it as long as we all share the vision and have the skills to do it.
I've had the opportunity to launch this project into startup accelerators more than a couple of times, but I have chickened out because of the weirdness it would be for me to come out to my friends and family having a bra website. So you're not alone of feeling weirded out by this situation.
At the end, you're not giving to the site much personal information, I try to keep that to a minimum in order to protect users from "the internet", so most I will ever know about you is which bras you have, and if you're using the site, then it shouldn't be much of an issue I guess.