I don't wear a bra

A group of teen to twenty something young men were laughing at my nipples showing through my shirt the other day, and it motivated me to write this post. Apparently women who don't wear bras are a big deal.

When I was about 11 or 12  my older sister told me that I should get a bra because you could see my nipples through my shirt. Until that point I had never really considered wearing a bra. I knew that people wore them. I had been seeing my mom's stretched out cotton bras hanging on the clothes line since I could remember, and I knew that my elementary school friend wore what she called a training bra because she had proudly shown it to me literally the first day we met in kindergarten when we were 4 years old.

Since then I have worn bras almost consistently, barring the short time between the ages of 15 and 16 when I experimented with androgyny (I still miss my buzz cut and baggy jeans sometimes). But about a year ago I started noticing that my breasts were not as round and perky as they used to be. I shrugged it off. I'm getting older now and of course my body is going to change as time goes by. Then I started reading a few studies here and there that showed that women who don't wear bras actually have perkier and rounder breasts than those who do. What?!

The more you work out any muscle, the stronger it gets; so, why wouldn't this be the case for the muscle that hold up our breasts?

Coupled with the problem of diminishing perkiness are the cultural implications of wearing something that changes the shape of our breasts to make them more uniform, straight, round, and high. While I don't think it is wrong for us to want perfectly round breasts, I do think it is strange that this is one cultural norm that we don't regularly question. People are very willing to shout it out loud that women shouldn't feel obligated to wear makeup; but we tend to think of bras as a necessity. I know even now some women will probably respond to this saying they have to wear a bra because otherwise their breasts would be sore and would hang uncomfortably due to their size (for stories from women who choose note to wear bras, follow this link!)

But my breasts are fine just the way they are. One is slightly bigger than the other, which means that one nipple always sits a little higher. They are spread wide apart so that cleavage is basically a pipe-dream (even when I wore one of those 2 cup sizes up bras for my girlfriend's wedding last year), and their shape and size varies throughout the month depending on where I am in my menstrual cycle, and their size and shape varies throughout the day depending on how warm or cold it is, or how active I've been. I don't need them to be perfect and round and high. I know it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but my choice to not wear a bra is empowering.

And if you want to make that choice too, it's completely up to you. But please consider why it is you think the bra is necessary, and where it is you got that information from. Chances are you were told that if you didn't wear a bra your breasts would sag as you aged. Maybe you were told it is inappropriate to let your nipples be seen through your shirt. The people who told you that are wrong. And if you like the bra, no part of me will ever judge you for that. Because you have the freedom to choose what you do to your own body.

Happy Tuesday!

J