by Jeff LeRoy, Rachel LeRoy & Kiki Waters of Intimateguide.com

If you’re a guy and you walk into a lingerie shop and you want to buy a bra for your favorite lady and you don’t know what size she is, you’ll often be asked to compare her breasts to fruit. Many think this tradition was invented by hapless guys, but in actuality it’s the lingerie shops who needed some kind of guide to get the size right. This is surprising since the “fruit system” completely ignores band size. We’re going to brush that little detail aside for now though. We thought it would be fun to test the fruit/cup size comparison so we got a male dress form, gave “him” fruity breasts and tried on some bras. Here are the results of our experiment.

After hitting the library and the internet, we established two popular theories about how fruit relates to bra cup size:

Theory 1

• A Cup = Lemon
• B Cup = Orange
• C Cup = Grapefruit
• D Cup = Melon

Theory 2

• A Cup = Kiwi
• B Cup = Apple
• C Cup = Orange
• D Cup = Grapefruit
• DD+ Cup = Melon

We obtained our wireframe dress form named “Chewy” (we don’t know why) from a local T-shirt designer, established Chewy’s band size as 38″, then purchased bras in several sizes ranging from 36A-40DDD. Since we could not find an A cup bra in a band size larger that 36″, we used a band extender to fit the 36″ bra on Chewy’s frame.

The kiwis (left) fit the A cup bra quite well. The center gore of the bra remained snug on Chewy’s chest and the cups were amply filled, leaving no extra material. Although the lemons (right) were slightly bigger than the kiwis, they too fit the A cup bra very well, filling out the bra a little better and giving Chewy some juicy cleavage. Neither the lemons nor the kiwis fit the B cup bra very well. In both cases a whole lot of extra material was left in each cup, giving Chewy a “shriveled raisin” look that was not very flattering.’

Theory 2 predicts that an apple is a good approximation of a B cup. Our apples were just a little small for our B cup bra (left). The apples did not completely fill the cup and left some wrinkled material on each cup. Still, an apple is in range and slightly larger apples could realistically fill out the bra. The oranges (center) were a much better fit for the B cup bra. They filled the cups nicely, giving Chewy a lovely feminine curve.

Going slightly overboard, we tried the grapefruit with the B cup bra (right) and were not surprised by the results. The grapefruit were too large for the bra. They spilled out the bottom of the bra and lifted the center gore away from Chewy’s chest so much that Rachel could fit her whole hand between Chewy and the bra!

Sticking with the grapefruit (and following theory 1), we tried a C cup bra (left) and Chewy was still bursting out the bottom of his bra. Although the center gore was slightly closer to Chewy’s chest, Rachel could still get her entire hand in between the bra and Chewy. So, we tried theory 2 and slid our oranges into Chewy’s 38C (right). The oranges fit fairly well, but like theory 2′s B cup apples, the C cup oranges left just a slight bit of wrinkled material. A larger orange would have fit perfectly, but if you’re the size of our oranges, then we’d definitely recommend a B cup.

As we moved up to a D cup bra, theory 1 left us guessing a bit. What kind of melon should we use? Melons vary widely in size. Certainly the average watermelon is far bigger than a D cup. Should we use honeydew? Finally, we settled on cantaloupe and they were way too big for the D cup (left). While the cantaloupe isn’t the smallest of melons, we’re pretty sure that if you’re the size of just about any melon, you’re not a D cup. Chewy’s 38D barely held the cantaloupe without tearing and Rachel was able to get two hands between Chewy and the bra’s center gore.

The grapefruit (right) faired better, holding the theory 2 pattern of fitting pretty well, but being just slightly small. The grapefruit did not fill the cup entirely, causing some small wrinkles on the fabric surface. Again, larger grapefruit would have filled the D cup nicely.

Undaunted, we pressed forward by forcing Chewy’s melons into a 38DD bra. The cantaloupe were still too large even for a DD cup size. Chewy’s bra straps strained against the load and the bra’s underwires and center gore did not rest against Chewy’s body. It looked as though the cantaloupe might drop right out of the bottom of the bra at any second. We were somewhat surprised by this since theory 2 had predicted melons as the appropriate fruit analogy for a DD cup and theory 2′s predictions had been running slightly small on the other sizes. There was no doubt, however, that these melons were too big for a DD cup.

The final test for the cantaloupe came with our DDD bra. Since DDD breasts are rarely as round as a cantaloupe, we decided to give Chewy’s bra a fighting chance by cutting a small portion of the cantaloupe so they would lie flat against Chewy. After wrapping the cut fruit in plastic, we slid Chewy’s new breasts into his DDD bra. The results were fairly satisfying. The DDD bra held the cantaloupe pretty well. The center gore didn’t quite lie flat to Chewy’s chest, but we no longer had fear that the cantaloupe would escape the bottom of the bra.

We played around a lot with various combinations and found that theory 2 holds up pretty well for the standard A-D cup sizes. Beyond that, however, the fruit analogy begins to break down. So guys, while the fruit analogy is better than any simple system we can come up with, we still think you’re better off sneaking into her lingerie drawer to find the correct size. That is, if she was measured correctly in the first place – but that’s a different experiment for a different day.