There is a moment in a woman’s life when she must graduate from mere underwear to lingerie—from the white cotton undershirts and briefs of girlhood to those structured, stuffed, elasticized contraptions that lift and hold and wrangle and enhance and protect her rapidly changing body.

I did not want to wear a bra, had clung to my eyelet-trimmed Fruit of the Loom camisoles for probably too long before my mother dragged me to Victoria’s Secret to have a stranger measure and appraise my bust. She picked out a slightly padded, flesh-toned brassiere that I could barely bring myself to try on. Because, you know, a bra isn’t just a bra. It’s the first step toward adulthood, the first admission of one’s sexual identity. A first bra is at once humiliating and titillating, terrifying and exciting, mysterious yet somehow utterly banal. It’s surrendering to the expectations of being a woman, but also to its pleasures.