Putting a Phone Between Your Boobs Is Probably Not the Best Way to Measure Your Bra Size

When it comes to clothing innovations, women could really use a better way to measure breast size. After all, measuring tape or a handsy woman at Victoria's Secret don't really cut it.

We really just don't think this app, which is supposedly being developed in Japan with hopes to launch next month, is going to do the trick.

Japanese news outlets along with the Mirror are reporting on ChiChi, which bills itself as an app to help women measure their bust sizes easily and accurately. The three-step process, as seen on ChiChi's website, is pretty darn simple: Take your sumaho (short for sumatohounu, "smartphone" in Japanese), sandwich it in between your breasts and get your cup size.

So is this even for real? Popular Japanese blog Gigazine suggests that the "technology" could work through weight, with certain weights correlating to certain cup sizes. A Japanese web engineer website has an entire breakdown, comparing an A cup to the weight of two eggs, a B cup to the weight of a kitten and an H cup to the weight of a "human baby." 

ChiChi's website states it is recruiting testing subjects and plans to launch in January 2016. (Mic reached out to confirm that date plus a few other niggling details, including whether this app is a real product at all.) But suffice it to say that an app like this one, should it even exist, probably doesn't solve the problem for women — and let us be clear: Finding bras that fit is a big problem.

Measuring your boobs and finding a great-fitting bra is very, very hard (if you don't believe it, just check the subreddit r/ABraThatFits). Not all women have tailor-level measuring skills, and all bras have their own quirks when it comes to fit. Not to mention all boobs have their own unique shapes, from fullness to roundness to (yes, we'll be real here) droopiness. One 32B may fit drastically different than another 32B, depending on the fabric, brand and a million other aggravatingly unknowable factors.

Which is why a large number of women — perhaps up to 64% of women, as one study cited, or even 80%, the stat ChiChi cites — are wearing the wrong size bra for them.)

A number of apps have tried to help, from ThirdLove, which measures using photos, to Sizem, which requires women to measure themselves with a measuring tape first. None have revolutionized bra shopping entirely — and we doubt quantifying the sheer poundage of our breasts, particularly from questionable boob-squeezing innovation, is going to do the trick either. iPhones are powerful, but they can't perform magic.