Before you get all excited and run out the door to see what’s going on near you today on National No Bra Day, let’s take a closer look at this bra thing. Most agree that bras were once called brassieres and are undergarments worn to confine breast movement. After that, wearers split into those who wish to conceal their breasts and those who wish to promote them. This harmonizes nicely with the two reasons women wear makeup. Seducers want to be more noticeable and Camouflagers want to be less noticeable. Want to read Why Do Women Wear Makeup and Perfume? Click here. I wish we had a no-makeup or perfume day, but you can’t have everything.
Wikipedia sums up the history of bras as “closely tied to the social status of women, the evolution of fashion, and the shifting views of the female body over time.” It’s a good starting point.
Let’s Take a Closer Look at Bras
Brassieres weren’t always bras
Early in their history, they weren’t even brassieres as we know them. I read somewhere that an early spelling of what would eventually become brassiere was the 14th century French word for shoulder strap. In 1907, Vogue magazine told readers that a short corset worn by women to support the bust was called a brassiere. Or the term brassiere first appeared in Syracuse 14 years earlier, or any of several other stories. This is another whodunit. I like the story that says the first brassiere was invented as a byproduct of someone cutting a full corset into upper and lower parts. Voila, a bra and a girdle. I’ll go with the accidental discovery.
Corsets were undergarments made for compressing women into too-tight lace-up garments that cinched the waist and torso
Corsets’ primary duty was to make the waist appear as small as possible. The illusion of a tiny waist was achieved by restraining the wearer so tightly that breathing was difficult and sitting down was impossible.
Corsets held their shape with strips of whalebone, which were strong, lightweight, narrow slats called stays. They were built in to prop up the corset and avoid spills.
The Royal Ontario Museum says
“For centuries, whalebone was used for shaping fashion in the Western world. Whalebone, the ribs in the upper jaws of the whale, were prepared by boiling for 12 hours until soft enough to cut into various shapes and lengths and inserted in small pockets of fabric. Each baleen rib was examined by the workman and sorted according to length and quality as he worked. It hardened when cooled.” The photo above is from the Museum.
Wealthy women wore corsets under evening gowns to enhance the size and shape of whatever bust they had
Thus began the history of breast-related cognitive dissonance
When I was at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, I found this quote from a study subject.
I want everyone to admire and envy my magnificent breasts, but don’t you dare mention them, touch them, or let me catching you looking at them.
Bodices, corsets’ cousins, covered the same zone, but visibly, sometimes as part of a dress. They were primarily worn to support and enhance the breasts.
The industry calls them bodice-rippers, and on their covers you will find many heroes who look like Fabio
Bookstores everywhere have entire sections devoted exclusively to historical romances, stories of strong, manly men without shirts who take their sexual pleasures by force. Most follow the standardized No! No! Yes! progression to build the drama and make it clear who’s doing what to whom. For many years, the sex was implied in these “romance” novels. No more.
Back to the bra
Some of the first coverups were simple bands of cloth, worn crisscrossed or wraparound. Today’s bandeau tops have that crisscrossed look while tube tops are still the simplest design, using one wraparound piece of cloth. Both were worn for modesty and neither was used to shape or enhance.
Most history agrees that the modern bra was invented in Paris in 1914
The design was essentially the same one-piece wraparound fabric rig used by South Seas Islanders for who knows how many thousands of years. But this one was two pieces of fabric sewn together with a decorative ribbon. Freed from the rigid confines of the corset, women’s breasts were hammock in comfort.
Many “bras” were no more than filmy camisoles
Imagine a sheer girly wife beater with a tiny pink ribbon in front. These gauzy bras neither restrained nor shaped breasts. They draped loosely, almost always hanging by spaghetti straps.
Bras became breast shapers when cups were introduced
Cups were designed to move things around in such a way that women appeared more well-endowed than they actually were. Long before they were called brassieres, these articles of clothing were called “breast bags.”
Cup sizing became the thing because women’s breasts vary in many ways
It’s fairly common knowledge that most women’s breasts are not always the same size and shape (the larger phenomenon is called bilateral asymmetry).
A brassiere that appeared in Vogue magazine pushed the breasts apart instead of squeezing them together. Another instant hit. And along came backless bras, elastic, padding, adjustable straps, how did women ever get along without all of this? Styles, fabrics, colors, patterns, elasticity, and padding. How had women ever survived without all these things?
Flappers
When the boyishly slender look came into fashion around the days of the flapper, women intentionally compressed their breasts against their chests. That’s when the bandeau bra came along to flatten female chests when it was worn snugly. The snugger, the flatter.
It only makes sense that compressing chests was easier for small-breasted women.
But most women, particularly mothers with kids, weren’t built like flappers. A dress shop couple figured a way to give the big gals a bra of their own. They called their product Maiden Form and it supported and enhanced the breasts of full-figured women. With larger and heavier women outnumbering the sylphs, the days of minimizing breasts ended. It’s no coincidence that around this time, movies were becoming common entertainment.
The Outlaw was a top-heavy 19-year-old Jane Russel’s first film role
She played a peasant girl in a this-will-come-to-no-good love triangle with outlaw gunmen Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday. It was her first film role.
Hughes was obsessed with what he called “the stars of the show”
To emphasize the size of Russell’s already large breasts, Hughes had curved metal rods sewn in under a large bra’s cups (whalebone wasn’t stiff enough).
This may have been the first underwire bra
You can find scores of stories that say she wore it for the scene. There’s also a bunch who say that she didn’t, she threw it away and padded her own bra with tissues.
At any rate, this still-provocative pose was way too hot for the Production Code Administration, who said ”the girl’s breasts are shockingly emphasized.” (I’m shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on here) The decency leaguers kept the film from being shown for three more years.
In a really weird era, bras grew sharp points at the ends
Most think Madonna invented the bullet bra, but she did not.
Dagmars was the name for the large chrome bullets on the front of post-WW2 Cadillacs
Why Dagmars? Dagmar was a blonde starlet with big breasts. People who didn’t get the Dagmar reference called them bullets or torpedoes. The largest Dagmars were on the 1957 Cadillacs.
Athletic bras are the female equivalent of men’s jockstraps
Active women support the loose parts and keep them from bouncing about with jogging bras, tennis bras, workout bras, basketball bras, and I suppose volleyball and pickleball bras, too.
Speaking of bouncing breasts
Did you know that Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carola were co-hosts of The Man Show? The entertainment was deliberately beery, sophomoric, and titillating. One of their weekly features was videos of braless women bouncing on trampolines.
Bonus
Maidenform’s “I dreamed I was…” was a series of memorable ads with women wearing bras in the most unlikely places. The Weintraub agency convinced the manufacturer that these ads “promoted female independence and empowerment.”
Those old enough remember when cigarette makers ran ads for skinny cigarettes that promoted female independence and empowerment, too. “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Stanford University says those ads exploited civil rights, feminism, and fashion to appeal exclusively to female smokers.
Are you kidding me?
A dozen pages deep and a dozen more inks later, I found one angry feminist who said that men are shocked by women without bras. She said the reason men react this way to braless women is because “men implicitly think that they own breasts and that only they should remove bras.” This came as news to me. I have never been shocked by a braless woman, although I’ve been taken aback a few times by deliberately audacious displays. Neither do I think I own women’s breasts. And I expect when a woman wants her bra off, she can do it herself, as so many do as soon as they get home.
Today, most sites say National No Bra Day is no longer about protesting against male swine
Today it promotes breast cancer awareness, breast health, self-examinations, and body positivity. Some go braless because it’s fashionable, but more skip the harness because it’s more comfortable without it. Guys who wear boxers instead of the more jock-like tighty whiteys, the kind little kids wear, do so in comfort. Heads up guys – there are only 14 more shopping days until National Boxer Shorts Day.
Speaking of No Bra Day, this is widely considered to be the classic female breast envy photo
Which of the female film stars below is definitely not wearing a bra?
Sophia later explained the photo saying, “Look at the picture. Where are my eyes? I’m staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow—BOOM!—and spill all over the table.”
Personal moment
When I was hardly school age, we had a dexterity toy where the goal was to roll a small ball around the spiral from the bottom of the hill to the top. The toy was named after the popular slogan of the Colorado Gold Rush: Pike’s Peak or Bust. I was too young to know bust meant broke, you either get to the top or fail. Given the shape of the mountain I thought Pike’s bust was a breast. Or don’t you remember Sweet Betsy From Pike?
