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December 31, 2006
Bras
As I was walking back to my car after breakfast at my favourite local cafe, a small group were heading the other way. The seemed like tourists. I couldn't quite pick the accents but I guessed European. They were obviously not familiar with the area. There were looking around looking a bit lost and I heard one of them say something about the coffee shop being around the corner.
One of the women was wearing plain off white t-shirt. It wasn't cut particularly low, but just at one side, the tiniest part of a lacy pink bra was showing. It looked like it had another colour in it as well - it may have been blue - it gave the impression of being an expensive bra.
It got me thinking about how much I like bras. Not so much because they are sexy - although they certainly can be – but so often they are just very very pretty.
I know Calendar Girl (among others) has serious reservations about the health risks associated with bra wearing (also see here)and I take Calendar Girl's recommendations on these things very seriously. Indeed bra wearing is often another thing that we men like to make women do to make themselves attractive to us - particularly the push-up cleavage making variety. So it could well be that at least some bras are bad for breast health. This was something I didn't think about a lot until I had read Calendar Girl's posts on the topic.
I was sad to read Calendar Girls revelations regarding bra wearing because, as I said earlier, I love bras. But it made sense to me. We men do love making our women (and women in general) do things to themselves that harm them but make them look more how we want them to look.
I'm betwixt and between regarding bras now. I understand what Calendar Girl says and it makes sense, but I do like how bras look.
This goes back a long time. As a young teenager I used to cut bra ads out of my mother's womens magazines. Then my sister became a teenager just about the same time the first issue of Dolly Magazine hit the streets. This issue remained famous in my memory for carrying an full frontal ad for a type of bra I had never seen before - a seamless see through bra in a reasonable large cup size.
For quite a while I was fascinated with how bras work and how different bras resulted in different shapes. So much so that my life partner has not bought a bra herself for years. I learnt that I liked the look of underwired bras – as it seems do most women and men by the absolute predominance of underwires in bras these days.
For a long time I liked the sheer seamless look. But then I learnt about high fashion bras such as Simone Perele. My partner likes wearing these bras on special occasions. I have spent a lot of time in lingerie shops over the years and now know how to determine if a bra fits correctly.
I have noticed how fashion has changed over the years and how different bras change the shape of the wearer's breasts.
For the moment, for me, bras remain part of the mystery of womanhood [added 1/1/07:] although with some discomfort about my role in perpetuating false ideals of beauty.
Posted by chriscurnow at December 31, 2006 4:45 PM
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Comments
To me a bra represents all the negative aspects that women and girls face when trying to live up to a standard of beauty which, quite honestly, is completely fake. Far to many body acceptance issues come from either trying to live up to those standards or by taking the opposite approach and thinking they are ugly because they can't live up to that standard.
I think the standard of beauty needs to change so that girls can stop trying to be something they are not, and simply be beautiful as they are.
All too often girls are told that what is important is what's on the inside as a way to combat their feelings about they their bodies look. That's bunk. That message doesn't change the standard, it confirms it as it draws their attention away. We should be teaching kids that they way they look is great. We are all the sum of our bodies, mind and spirit and should be appreciated for the whole.
Posted by: Dan Speers at January 1, 2007 7:44 AM
I very much like your comment Dan.
I agree that bras are very often used in advertising and in society in the way you describe and I so much agree that girls and women need to recognise their beauty just the way they are.
Just for the moment though, I wouldn't go as far as to say that bras are universally bad. I have four daughters and the five women in my house tell my the like the comfort they have when their breasts are supported. Allowing that they may well all have been socialised to feel this way, I think we have to give some weight to the voices of our breasted friends.
Also, a bra is a piece of clothing. It can be a fashion statement. It may be used for modesty. It can be worn for all sorts of reasons.
At the same time, we men (and other women) have to examine our expectations of beauty and what we ask our breasted friends to do to conform to some false and idealised concept of beauty we hold in our minds.
We don't go in much for easy answers at Breaststories.
Posted by: Chris Curnow 
at January 1, 2007 3:16 PM
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