I took a wrong turn at the mall yesterday and instead of the Apple Store, I found myself in the Semi-Annual Sale at Victoria’s Secret.

Wow.

The place is an estrogen tsunami: dozens of women swarming over sale bins, yanking out pink, purple, black, brown, green and ivory bras and waving them like flags. (God forbid anything white is on sale.) The sales crew is uniformly young, all dressed in all-black, with elaborate headsets clamped over their shiny hair and black waist-packs full of pink stock-order cards. The waist pack also doubles as a sort of lipstick holster.

The headsetters whip out measuring tapes to size up women on the spot: Want me to fit you? I can do it over your t-shirt? As usual, most of customers are told they are wearing the wrong size. If it’s true that most women wear bras in the wrong size, could it be that the definition of a good fit needs revisiting? New guideline: If an undergarment isn’t flapping in the wind or cutting off air supply, it fits.

As any riot-squad cop can tell you, this sort of behavior is contagious. So I find myself in line clutching my own pink card that notes my name and size. (I resist the tape measure; nothing is flapping or choking me, thanks.) There is one other middle-aged woman in line, and we exchange small smiles: Wrong turn at the Apple Store, right?

The noise level is high, both volume and pitch. It sounds like the Superbowl, only without men. (Actually, two young guys have ventured into the store with girlfriends. They look exactly like rabbits in the headlights. Happy rabbits, willing to get run over.) A headsetter comes to my side and raises her voice to explain the drill: Off to a roomy dressing room where I am handed a drawer containing one of each of the Victoria’s Secret bras in my size. (Why don’t they do this at shoe stores?) She urges me to try them all on, so I can “find out what really works” for me. I’m left to imagine my bra really working while I sit around and think deep thoughts.

The bras (unlike their sister garments from, say, Target) are made of lovely material and do indeed deliver on their various slogans. “Extreme lift” is exactly that.

As I gaze at my new Extreme self, I wonder if this is how I’m supposed to look. Where my 51-year-old chest once was, now sits a handy shelf. A counter, even. A full luncheon-service place-setting could be set on it, salad fork included.

I consult with my headsetter. She ponders. “I think,” she says solemnly, “that it looks awesome.” Of course I bought it. When someone uses that word about your underwear, $48 seems quite reasonable.

Just to be on the safe side, when I got home, I lugged out the Oxford English Dictionary (the massive two-volume edition with magnifying glass) and looked up “awesome.”

In some uses it has meant “appalling, dreadful and weird.” But, no, I’m sure that nice salesperson meant she was feeling “profoundly reverential.”

Yeah, that must be it.