Why did all the bras end up looking like Nerf balls? How did Victoria’s Secret highjack all the world’s underwear designers and force them to create only Nerf-bras? What inspired us to go along with this?
We all know that Victoria’s Secret and her evil twin, Pink, have made it impossible to buy a good bra. They fill their stores with brightly coloured foam oddities masquerading as bras, and no-one knows what happened to the real things.
Every woman you know has spent whole afternoons trying on bras and coming home empty-handed. Some of us have even gone to specialty stores to have our bodies measured for the perfect bra, and we have come home with a bra that cost a king’s ransom. That bra always ends up at the back of the underwear drawer along with all the other ones that pinch or scratch or leave welts on our bodies.
What is going on here? At some point we all bought in to the idea that our breasts should look like silicon implanted breasts, instead of the other way around. That’s how gullible we are.
Then, we were persuaded that nothing should disturb the pristine smoothness of our tee shirts. No nipples, no bulges, and most importantly, no bra seams. We were convinced that the tee-shirt bra was the epitome of good underwear, and that we needed lots of them in neon colours.
These bras that aren’t supposed to show under our tee-shirts are, paradoxically, the brightest coloured items of clothing that we own. They are the same colours as children’s candy. If you have one of these candy-coloured Nerf bras (and by now we all do), it will show under a white tee-shirt; I guarantee it.
How many of the women reading this take off their bras when they get home? Yes, I thought so. And yet, we are being told, by the lack of design choices, that the problem is us. More specifically, we learn through our repeated failures, that our bodies are the problem. Our breasts don’t conform to the design ideals, and as such we must suffer the consequences. .
A friend recently commented that she would rather wear a chest binder intended for transgender men than wear a bra. I know exactly what she meant. Being uncomfortable all day is hard work. What we really like are sports bras, stretchy camisoles with support liners, or no bra at all. And, we really don’t care if our nipples show. That’s someone else’s problem.
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Snowbird of Paradise 