In which I suggest we normalize breast shape already.*

I used to think brassières served a function, but it turns out that they don’t. Well, that is to say, they serve a style function, by changing the location and shape of the breasts, but they don’t do anything for breast health or to prevent sagging:

Robert Mansell, a professor of surgery at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, reported that, “Bras don’t prevent breasts from sagging, with regard to stretching of the breast ligaments and drooping in later life, that occurs very regularly anyway, and that’s a function of the weight, often of heavy breasts, and these women are wearing bras and it doesn’t prevent it.” John Dixey, at the time CEO of Playtex, agreed with Mansell. “We have no medical evidence that wearing a bra could prevent sagging, because the breast itself is not muscle so keeping it toned up is an impossibility.”

The lingering idea that foundation garments are healthy comes from the Victorians, as far as I can tell. There were breast bands but no corsets, girdles, or bras in the Middle Ages, so this idea that female unders confer health is at least younger than the Middle Ages.

An encapsulation-style sports bra might be useful, in terms of comfort, for keeping flesh from flopping around during vigorous activity, but regular daily-wear bras perform no function beyond raising and squishing the tissue into a shape we consider ‘normal,’ but which is, in actual fact, not.

Bras are uncomfortable and we only wear them to comply with social norms. Since I started working from home I’ve quit wearing bras altogether; the only time I ever consider one is when we’re going out somewhere. Usually I just opt for a coat, but with summer coming I have to consider if I’ll be putting on a bra or just going out with my boobs shaped like… well, actual boobs.

And middle aged boobs at that, which is so outro it’s practically against the law.

While I’ve been going braless for so many months now that the shape of my own boobs, as they exist in their 47th trip around the sun, now looks normal to me, I admit to some feelings of trepidation about nipples. If you have nipples yourself, you may be aware that they become erect in response to temperature changes, chafing, breezes, or sometimes for no goddamned reason at all. Since breasts, and especially nipples, are so sexualized, it feels unseemly to fail to hide them when one is a nasty old lady who shouldn’t ever have hard nipples in the first place, even though hard nipples have nothing to do with arousal or sex, like, 99.999% of the time.

But on the other hand, fuck that boob shame, because bras are flat-out uncomfortable. They’re probably only truly appropriate in outfits that also include high heeled shoes and make-up and all the other trappings of body-as-canvas-for-artistic-expression.

And look at pictures of famous women! Their boob shapes are, as they’ve ever been, ridiculous! That one look, combining countable ribs and jutting collar bones and high, round, smushed upper boob circles above a plunging neckline? It’s absurd, so false, and the result of some combination of surgery, duct tape, and airbrushing. I’d submit it’s okay for people in the fame industries to alter their boob shape as the muse strikes them, and blessings to them, but it’s false as fuck in terms of actual boob-shape reality, and people on the streets should be walking around with actual boob-shaped boobs just like they walk around with thigh-shaped thighs and face-shaped faces.

I don’t think there is any evidence, like there is for heels, that bras are bad for you. They don’t seem to cause cancer or anything, so beyond mild annoyance there’s no pressing reason to avoid them. But that tremendous relief you feel when you take one off is proof enough that they’re silly as fuck.

The only way to normalize boob-shaped boobs is for them to be common. Same with nipples. Is it selfish to wish to be be comfortable, above and before meeting social expectations? I don’t know, maybe. In general I dress very conservatively; when I leave my house I’m covered from neck to wrist to ankle, because I don’t think it’s appropriate to be pushing 50 and half-naked in public unless it’s just hot as fuck. But in order to be officially and truly dressed in ways that cannot offend, I’m supposed to smash some fat and glands into an absurd contraption that doesn’t actually serve any useful function? Ugh! I mean, thank God bras aren’t corsets, but they’re still ridiculous.

Free the boob! Seriously.

Remember: bra manufacture is a multibillion-dollar industry dominated by large multinational corporations.

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Read the history of the bra here.

* And then I went and looked at a bunch of images of starlets and red carpets and the sorts of things I generally avoid and discovered that boobs are free quite a lot now. Sometimes they’re shaped, but just as often they’re not, so this post is like a decade past its prime.