Chances are if you're reading this you started training your breasts around age 12 like I did. In your training program you probably learned about under-wires and padding levels and ways to enhance your figure. What you probably didn't learn, however, is how to find the proper sized fitting bra - statistics show that 80 percent of American women wear the wrong size. And you also may not have learned about how bras can be detrimental to your health. That's right, I said it, bras can be bad, very bad!
In lieu of my curiosity about bras and why I spend a minimum of $200 a year at Victoria's Secret - I began a simple experiment. I took my bra off. For two weeks. Before I lavish you with details of the quirky results, here's a tiny list of bra history...
The bra you strap yourself into every morning wasn't really even a thing until the 1920s. During World War 1 corsets were banned in order to make bullets. Women gradually replaced their corsets with bras. The androgynous flapper style first popularized bras by giving off the flat chest I can dance all night vibe and then America, nor Maidenform or Warner's Brother's Corset Co., looked back.
Today, 95 percent of American women wear bras daily and it has spawned into a billion dollar industry, Victoria's Secret at the top followed by Hanes. What concerns me, however, is that statistic next to this one - in America 12 percent or one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer at some point in their lives. HELLO! Is there a correlation? I believe so.
Wearing bras can restrict movement in the breast tissue. AND after strapping them in, most of us use name brand Dove or Secret deodorant, putting the heavy metal aluminum into our sensitive arm pits right next to our breasts. You may be thinking, "Isn't that the point of wearing a bra and deodorant? I don't want my breasts to move or my armpits to sweat..." What are we becoming? Plastic dolls?
The lymph nodes in your breast need to move, they were designed to move, otherwise toxins can build up and stagnate causing tenderness and pain. Antiperspirant deodorants may contribute to cancer because of their toxicity level and the fact that sweating is an important means of the body's elimination.
And here's the real kicker - wearing a bra can speed up breast sagging! Why? Because when your breasts are constantly strapped into a constricting device, the muscles that are supposed to hold them up grow feeble and weak. Not wearing a bra helps to build these muscles up, helping them stand tall over the long term. This is why many plastic surgeons recommend their breast enhancement patients to not wear bras - so they can grow strong muscles to support the implants.
So... Onto my experiment... I took my bra off. My breasts had been painful and tender off and on for months. When I took my bra off they felt heavy and they hurt, but wow, it was 1000 degrees cooler in my shirt! I feared going out in public because I thought oh, no, what if someone thinks I look like a disheveled damsel and tries to hit on me. I wondered if people would be put off by my free jiggling tatas and give me the stink eye - after all that's what happened in 5th grade, right? We grow up thinking if we aren't wearing a bra, we are being lazy and improper. We'll upset the class if our nipples are visible through our shirts.
I had all of this fear about walking around without a bra, and then I realized, NO ONE EVEN NOTICED. I noticed, of course, because the first week without a bra was wildly unfamiliar and weird. During the second week, my breasts quit hurting, I could even jog without noticing that they were in motion, and then I realized just how oversexualized breasts and nipples are in our society. Our boobs are intended to nourish babies and yet they are regarded as indecent. It makes me wonder if bras are just another form of female suppression. One that we'll all come together one day to toss out and save our health and femininity.
Let's not just "free the nipple," let's free the whole boob!
