(NSFW) Pictures Of Breasts With Broad Roots, In Too Wide and Correct Underwires + Narrow Underwire Fix

   Breasts with a broad root are breasts whose base is broad. By base I mean the part of the breasts that is attached to the torso. You can visualise such breasts as cones with a broad circumference.

   It is not always easy to identify broad breasts on a photograph or in the mirror, as the proportions of the rib cage can make the breasts look optically narrower or broader. However when you try on a bra, you can usually tell if you have broad breasts -- narrower underwires (like those of Freya, Lepel or Comexim bras) cut of a part of your tissue, and you seem to need underwires that end at least in the center of your armpits, if not further.

   To help you understand how broad-rooted busts look like and the fit issues that they face, here are some photos of breasts with a wide root. Don't forget that broad-rooted breasts come in many different shapes -- they may be big or small, shallow, pendulous, firm, unfirm, bottom-heavy, top-heavy, wide-spaced or not, and so on. Even the broadness of broad roots differs: some are slightly broad and can still wear some Freya underwires, others are very broad and need to focus only on brands and models that have wide underwires.

Nekkid boobies after jump! Click to read more.

Bust A

The owner of this bust is 5'2" tall and weighs 185lb. Her current measurements (that seem to fluctuate quite a bit in the bust) are:
Underbust:
  - loose: 39"
  - snug: 35"
  - BTT: 33"
Bust:
  - standing: 49"
  - laying: 50.5"
  - leaning: 52"

"Not a smooth line from armpit to waist; instead, a bulge of tissue below the armpit because breasts are wide enough to wrap around the sides."

"A slight crease can be seen sloping down from the back of the arm pit to just under the breast."

 "No Discernable Breast Root". In this case try the "Push Test":

"Some creasing seen where ill fitting bras sat, and towards the back."

"Tissue falls from around the widest point of the ribs rather than from the front of the ribcage."

Now lets see the same bust in a couple of different bras:

"Stiff wires that are too narrow. A diagonal crease can be seen above the wing where the tissue is being pulled forward from its natural resting place, and the tip of the underwire is digging in."

"Too big in the band so no wire distortion. The wires are quite wide and accommodate my breast width beautifully. If only the cup and and fit :) "

"Slightly too narrow wires that dig in to the side boob spillage at the underwire tip just below the end of the channeling."

"Scooping and swooping into the softer wires on this bra causes distortion in the wires due to how far back my tissue extends. This distortion causes the pulling across the horizontal seam on the side of the cup, and the abrupt angle of the channeling at the underwire tip."

Bust B

    Her measurements: 

  Underbust loose: 35

  Underbust tight: 33.5

  Bust standing: 44

  Bust leaning: 48

"In addition to being very wide, I have a lot of migrated tissue back towards my shoulder blades that I'm still working on bringing forward.  I spent a lot of years wearing bras that were 4+ cup sizes too small, so I have a lot of tissue that needs to be brought back to where it belongs!"

This is what she looks like in her best fitting bra, an Elomi Valentina in 34HH: 

"This bra is one of the best that I have, and the wires encase my breast root pretty well, although you can see in the naked side shot that there's still a bit behind the wire.  You can also see how my root is pretty flat on the bottom and angles up a bit towards the side. So far Elomi bras are the only ones I've tried that have fit well (and made me feel good about myself), although I do have one Cleo that fits okay, although I can't wear it for more than about 8 hours before it starts becoming uncomfortable."

Bust C:

Her breasts have broad roots and are also shallow. This can make finding a well-fitting bra hard, but she doesn't give up and instead chooses to try to modify fitting bras.

Measurements: 
underbust:
   break-the-tape tight, fully exhaled: 29.0"
   comfortably snug, fully exhaled: 29.75"
bust:
   standing: 35.25:
   90 degrees: 37.0"

   laying: 36.5"

"Here are my broad roots!  You can still faintly see the marks from the bra I just removed, but I’ve highlighted the inframammary fold in orange.  It goes pretty far into my armpit!  I have pretty classic shallow boobs, with tissue spread out all over and up almost to my collarbone, but veryy little projection.  I usually wear a 30 E/F."

"This is a Freya Ivy longline in 32E.  The red line shows the wire, and the orange line shows where my inframammary fold.  You can see the wire is a bit too narrow.  It’s actually worse than it appears, because this is at least one cup size too big (it looks huge on my right boob, but that’s my smaller boob).  So in the correct size the wire would be way too narrow.  It’s also got too much projection for me.  Luckily I was able to fix both those problems!"

"Here’s the fix!  I basically took a little tuck in the top of the band just past the end of the wire.  You can just see the little fold in the photo.  This has the two-fold effect of opening up the wire so it fits my root, and flattening out the cup so it no longer has so much projection.  Note that this only works if the wires are pretty compliant, like they are here."

"Here is the modified version!  Now the wire follows my root quite well, and the cup fits better too.  You can see there’s less gapping on the top, though there is still some on the right boob.":

"Here’s me in the famously terrible Cleo Jude, in 30F.  The cups fit terribly in multiple ways, but one of them is that the wires are quite a bit too narrow.  This is what the bra looks like before I’ve swooped and scooped. Once again, the orange line is my inframammary fold. You can see the wire is sitting on my boob."

"But here is what happens after I swoop and scoop!  Since this wire is quite stiff and my breast tissue is quite firm, my boobs basically force the wire down my chest.  It’s a similar idea to the orange-in-a-glass problem, where too-big boobs will leave empty space in the cup because the base of the breast is too big to fit into the cup.  Here the root of my breast is too wide to fit between the ends of the wire, so it leaves some empty space at the bottom of the wire."

"Here’s another picture of the extra space at the bottom of the cup.  Sorry it’s so blurry!"

"Finally, here I am in my best-fitting bra, a Cleo Juna in 30F.  This bra is actually a little too narrow for me right our of the box, but since it has fairly stiff wires, I was able to bend them a bit.  The red line is the original wire shape, and the orange line is where they sit now.  If you want to do this, just grab the two ends of the wire and pull them apart.  It takes a fair amount of force to cause a permanent shape change, so don’t be shy.  This will flatten the cup a bit too, so be careful."

   Hopefully this posts helps you to establish whether your breasts have a broad root or not. I want to send out a huge thanks to the awesome ladies who submitted their photos for this post. Thanks, you rock!

  Do your breasts have broad, medium or narrow roots? Which is your preferred bra brand? I'm on the wider side and like the underwires of Panache (and their daughter brands), Masquerade, Ewa Michalak and Affinitas bras.