Braless in Brasil is one of my favorite bosom blogs of all time. June didn’t take fancy pictures, but her content was stellar, with multi-faceted perspectives, unique topics, and great advice. Plus, she was a goldmine for busty nursing mothers.

Her posts became pretty irregular around the time her second child was due. Eventually she announced on Facebook that she was deleting her domain name. I missed the announcement, so when The Lingerie Addict tweeted in January that all traces of Braless in Brasil had vanished, I got a giant jolt to action. I knew she was moving from Brasil, but what if she’d already moved again and I could never find her? I quickly texted her cell phone number and was relieved when she replied.

We finally met up earlier this month when she was in town, and since a lot of Hourglassy readers are also Braless in Brasil fans, I thought you’d like to hear what’s been going on with our favorite 32JJ. For those of you who didn’t get to meet June through her blog, here are two guest posts that she wrote for Hourglassy a few years ago:

(We always intended for it to be longer than a 2-part series, but I’m glad we got at least two posts on the subject!)

First, it’s probably no surprise that June is extremely smart brilliant. She works in a very serious field, and she has all sorts of credentials on her resume that I’m not allowed to share with you because “June” isn’t her real name. (In fact, when I called out to her at the train station where we met (having recognized her by her bustline), she didn’t answer at first because she forgot she was “June”!).

Since she’s so smart, I hesitated to bring up bodies, bras and shopping. These subjects seemed trivial compared to her professional life, and I assumed she’d moved on. Instead, I asked her safe questions about her personal life and ended up being even more intimidated:

  • Using the internet from Brasil, June found a rare rental apartment in a desirable school district in her new city.
  • She moved into that apartment all by herself with a baby and a toddler while her husband finished his professional commitments in Brasil.
  • She jumped into a new job that required a quick climb up the learning curve.
  • She was getting ready for two Asian trips in the weeks ahead after having already traveled to numerous other conferences around the world.
  • She had had a surgery that would cause her body to take a year to get back to normal.
  • She doesn’t have a nanny.

Every time I asked her how she does it all, she’d reply, “Lots of coffee.” With such self-deprecation, it wasn’t long before I felt at ease talking about the one thing we have in common: big boobs. Here are some of her recent observations:

  •  Women in academia seem to change the way they dress according to their professional level and aspirations. Once they get tenure, they’re a lot freer. Right now, the low BiuBiu scoop neck in June’s closet isn’t getting a lot of wear.
  • Living with a dearth of bra and clothing options in Brasil forced her to go through the ordering process a million times to find her size in all the different brands. Now that she knows what fits and works on her, she tends to stick with that, especially since she’s so busy. For example, Pepperberry tunics are good with her long torso, and she needs to replace the Ewa Michalek she was wearing that day. (Even though she told me that her EM bra was old and stretched out, her bust stil looked incredible in it.)
  • She agrees that Curvy Kate bikini tops are the BEST. She doesn’t find the bottoms to be very friendly to women past their 20’s who have had kids, so she buys inexpensive bottoms in a matching solid elsewhere. She wished that Curvy Kate tankinis weren’t too short on her, so she was excited to hear that my Moonflower tankini can be made longer for longer torsos.
  • We agreed that being a 32 band makes clothes shopping so much easier! This led to a delicate discussion about weight and how we each need our own individual motivation to maintain what is healthy for us. I mentioned that for me, the only thing that got me to change was the threat of having to take cholesterol medication. Personal appearance is important, but it just couldn’t get me moving. This brought up an interesting discovery that June made at a recent conference. She used to wear a 30 band and still carries some of her pregnancy weight. She noticed that a lot more of the younger men (her field is male-dominated ) approached her to discuss her work when she wore a 30 band a few years ago than at the same conference this year when she wore a 32–even though she’s been doing her best work yet. How I wish June were still blogging so that we could read her reflections on this.

    • If it weren’t for lack of time, we’d definitely be hearing from her. June may have moved away from blogging, but she’s still passionate about body image, respect, clothing and bra fit issues. She even wishes she had time to learn to sew. I doubt there’s enough coffee to make that happen!