Bras Shmas - Why I Stopped Wearing Them

It was a bright sunny evening (Australian daylight savings) and I went to the bathroom to have a shower. I was wearing my favourite bra and a tight singlet, and I took a minute to admire my reflection - my boobs looked fantastic. But as I got undressed I avoided looking in the mirror. I didn't want to see my actual breasts, the asymmetrical ones that don't hang perfectly straight with a small ravine of cleavage. And in the enlightening moment in the middle of Shower Thoughts I realised "damn, I hate my body." At roughly the same moment, I also thought to myself, "I should do something about that."

So I wear less bras now.

Here's the thing about underwire bras: even if they're not push-up or padded at all, they are shaped in a perfect circle - the conventionally beautiful breast shape. Breasts naturally hang down and slightly outwards, but the standard shape of a bra pushes them up and in, so they sit perky and cleavage-y. Of course, this is fine if it doesn't mess with your body image, but in my experience when you spend the vast majority of your day only seeing yourself with "perfect boobs", your real body can seem like an unpleasant surprise.

There is also the feminist view that bras are a patriarchally enforced form of bodily mutilation. While I don't think this is necessarily true for all women, some of whom find bras empowering, helpful, or just enjoyable, I started to see more sense in this belief. When I started wearing only soft bralets or just no bra altogether, I immediately noticed the difference in taking them off at the end of the day. Suddenly there was no longer a sense of relieving my breasts from a tight and painful 12 hour grip, and no longer deep red marks along my ribcage. Instead, taking off a bralet feels like nothing; like your breasts have been happily chilling out all day wherever they feel like. I felt like I'd spent five years hurting myself every day, only to end up with a crappy booby image (geddit?).

Of course for some women, cutting down on bras is not an option. Bras can definitely make life easier and less painful - at a 10D it still took a few months to stop feeling painfully unsupported - and bras can make you look and feel fabulous. But the Aesop-style moral-to-the-story is that it's always good to analyse your actions; are you doing something because it genuinely makes you feel good about yourself, or are you just doing it for the sake of it? Is it actually making your life better or is it making you feel shitty? How many of your actions are self-driven, and how many are demanded by the patriarchy? If you can find ways to make your actions intentional and completely autonomous, life is lookin' good.

Xx
Hannah