Are Bras the Enemy?

I always meet interesting people at the Last Friday Ladies Lunch (LFLL) at Berkeley's Hillside Club. Or sometimes I already know them in one capacity but learn a whole different side to them.

Lynn is a fellow writer and also a registered nurse and health coach, but I noticed
that the name tag Sylvia had made for her read "bra expert." I knew that Sylvia took certain creative liberties when making our name tags because mine read "humorist." (I think our name tags reflect Sylvia's personal perspective on who we are to her.)

Anyhoo, I asked Lynn what her name tag was all about. And boy, did I learn a lot.

Apparently, in cultures where women don’t wear bras, there are much fewer incidents of breast cancer than in cultures where bras are the norm. I found this alarming. I realize that this observation don't necessarily mean that wearing bras actually gives one cancer. But it made me think.

Then my mind flashed to Grandma. As my sisters and I began developing, we lived with two fears that faced us every time Grandma reached out to hug us: that our breasts would one day sag to our waists and the skin beneath our arms would become large flaps that would sway in the breeze.

So my response to Lynn when she told me this was that I just wasn't one of those women who could pull off the braless lifestyle, vaguely motioning to my hefty mounds and the southerly direction they were likely to go if left to their own devices. But Lynn just discreetly looked downward to her own chest and told me she wasn't wearing a bra. Of course if Lynne had been one of those Twiggy types whose shape didn't change much from shoulders to hips, I could have dismissed her example as a veritable apples-and-oranges situation. (Or maybe oranges and raisins...)

But Lynn's cup size (if she wore a bra) would be about the same place in the alphabet as my C, and she looked nothing like Grandma—in fact, she was the picture of elegance.

I countered with the absolute necessity of wearing a sports bra when I work out, wincing slightly to illustrate the pain I would endure if I were ever to mount the elliptical at the gym in just a T-shirt. She asked how often I worked out and for how long. When I answered, she said that 45 minutes four times a week is a lot less time than wearing one all day every day. And then she explained how massages could restore circulation once the bra was off.

By wearing bras for 12 to 16 hours a day, we are sacrificing a good deal of healthy circulation. Consider what bras do, not only to your breasts but to your shoulders, back, and ribcage. It pushes some parts together and squeezes, pulls, and binds other parts to form a shape that has been deemed attractive by society.

So women end up treating their bodies like lumps of Play-dough. And to what end? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that bras were a conspiracy dreamed up by men who wanted to put our mammaries in cages. And that conspiracy is being perpetuated by all the women who believe that going braless would be wrong somehow, either because they would experience premature sag or look like hussies. I had bought into the whole thing, which is bad enough, but now it could be detrimental to my health? I had to make a stand.

So I took off my bra. (Not right there at the luncheon, but later, when I got home.) In order to address the issue of nipple irritation, I dug out my old cotton camisoles, which I figure will give me the protection I require in that area.

And I didn't wear a bra for the next 24 hours.

But on Saturday I was scheduled to sing in a choral concert for an assisted living community. I pictured elderly residents taking note of my liberated chest and I couldn't do it. I put on a bra. I bowed to the societal pressure that was inside my own head.

When I returned home, I was ashamed. What kind of feminist am I if I can't sing in front of a bunch of old people without a bra on? And I replied to myself, "a feminist who doesn't want people to think she's trying to look sexy when actually going braless gives her more of a saggy Grandma vibe." And then I realized I was talking about myself in the third person, which I hate.

So I decided to take it one day at a time. I didn't wear a bra for the rest of the week. At first it felt weird, but the more I didn't wear one, the more comfortable I became. Every once in a while I would be talking to someone and I'd think, I'm not wearing a bra, and I bet that person doesn't even know that I'm not wearing a bra. And then the person would be looking at me, expecting an answer of some sort and I would realize that I had no idea what we had been talking about.

But I am confident that soon I will be able to carry on an entire conversation without even thinking about bras. And if I decide to wear a bra sometimes, that's still better than all the time, right?

I know this whole braless experiment doesn’t mean I automatically get a free pass when it comes to breast cancer, but why not play the odds?

To see more from the bra expert herself, go to www.lynnfraley.com.

If you insist on subjecting yourself to other musings by Tanya Grove, by all means, read her blog For Words.