Last week, for the first time in my adult life, I spent seven days without a bra.
I’ve worn a bra every day since I was 13. I remember my first bra; a white cotton thing, more of an abbreviated tank top than an undergarment. At the time I had no breasts to speak of. I simply wanted a bra. I was adamant, I insisted on being bought that silly white thing.
Since then I have fleshed up, filled out. I will never claim that my breasts are spectacular; they are, in fact, overwhelmingly ordinary. They fall from my chest outward, small against the breadth of my shoulders and the generosity of my thighs.
My breasts are not high, nor are they perky. Rather, they are long, hanging from my chest in soft U-shaped drapes with the nipples almost directly downward. They fold over my ribs, giving me creases of soft flesh in the center of my chest, one a finger higher than the other. This gives my cleavage the impression of being slightly mismatched.
In size, my breasts are a soft handful, larger than apples, smaller than melons. Perhaps a grapefruit apiece. I straddle the no-where land between bra sizes, a B cup in some brands, a C in others. Their skin is ever so pale, gleaming with the iridescent rivulets of stretch marks. After a summer in bikinis and on nude beaches my breasts have gone from white-on-white to cream-on-pink. My nipples are only slightly darker, light pink with yellow undertones and a tight, tiny splash of rose in the center. I’ve seen nipples ranging in color from chocolaty brown spots to wounds of brilliant red. My nipples are not so dramatic.
The oddest thing about my breasts, which has kept me from plumping my cleavage high in corsets and convinced me to forever avoid demi-cup bras, are their distinctively large aureoles. It’s as though the aureoles continued to grow on, leaving my breasts behind, or as though I inherited my mother’s nipples but not the double-D breasts to balance them out. I’m not going to stick a ruler down my shirt at the moment, but at a quick glance I would estimate that my aureoles are each just under four inches in diameter. This used to embarrass me. Now it amuses me. These wide circles of puffy skin are just one of the quirks of my body I’ve grown enough to like.
I’m not particularly fond of my breasts. I have definitely run the gambit of issues, flaws, bits of myself I want to cover or poke at or cut off. My breasts are not an exception, with their teardrop shape and insistently large circles. But then, nor do they particularly trouble me. They are a sort of blank spot on my body’s radar, neither sculpted nor slack. My sexual wiring lingers in my nipples momentarily, and a hand will often stray to my breasts during masturbation, kneading softly. Having my nipples played with, sucked or licked, however, is usually a tease. Not teasing in a good way; teasing similar to a fly I want to swat.
I have never had any really good bras. I’ve owned a few nice ones, with bits of lace here and there. These are few and far between, however, and I’m usually content with a simple foam cup, an underwire , some skinny straps. The gentlemen in the audience may or may not appreciate how much good bras cost; I cannot drop $60 on a garment that no one actually sees. I don’t see bras as a lingerie item, and in scenes and sex they usually end up crumpled on the floor under my jeans.
I have always had a vague longing for the fruity dips and curves of high-placed, rounded cleavage. My sexual interest in women is often prey to a bit of breast fixation. That’s right; I’m a breast woman. Supposedly expensive bras can plump me, fill me, perk me and round me all at once, but I’ve yet to lay down money for the test drive and am content with my less-than-mythic decolletage.
Because I have a penchant for plunging button-down necklines my bras are often formed with great dips in the center, the cups sometimes held tenuously together by thin bits of string. This isn’t ideal for my breasts; in fact, I would say that my taste in clothing is in direct opposition to supportive, well shaped bras. I think one must have exceptionally high-placed breasts to comfortably wear a plunging V-shaped bra; my breasts are always wandering off in strange directions like unruly children.
And yet, although I’m clearly not on great terms with my bras, I continued to wear them. To not wear them had never occurred to me. Wearing a bra raises my breasts from their typical relaxed swing-low to a level that mimics the placement of a perky set. It shifts my nipples upward, low-beams turned to high-beams.
And then, with my breasts already sagging downward I lived with a tiny twist of terror in my stomach, the thought that someday my breasts would sag so low they’d end up level with my elbows. Characteristic of my imagination, they sagged down and down until I could imagine myself a white-haired hunchback with my breasts knocking at my knees. In a high-toned and perky culture my breasts can only hope to steadily decline.
I read an article last weekend questioning the myths surrounding bras. (Unfortunately while at work I cannot pull the link from the adult blog I found the article at. I will post it from a contained environment later this evening.) The prevention of the dreaded sag was front and center; the article argued that not only do we have zero proof that wearing a bra will prevent the breasts from sagging, but doing so for one’s entire life might encourage one’s breasts in a downward direction because the muscles of the chest wall never learn to support the breasts.
Huh, I thought. That actually makes quite a lot of sense.
I mean, what do we think happened to women’s breasts before we all started wearing bras? I doubt they grew significantly saggier. Yet there’s this image that unrestrained breasts will eventually drip down the chest like molasses and end up tangled in our feet.
The article then went into back pain, shoulder pain, bad fitting bras and the woes thereof. A ridiculously high percentage of the American population wear bras that are simply the wrong size. I’m guilty of this; my ideal bra size is hard to find. I also have chronic back pain; I carry a cramped muscle halfway down my spine that has not seen a relaxed moment since I was a freshman in college. I remain open to any back rub or suggestion that might unwind that damned Gordian knot.
Why am I wearing a bra every damn day of my life? Modesty? I admit that my experiment in bralessness had revealed that about half of my shirts are translucent in nature, but I am frankly not that kind of modest. Is the modesty to do with motion? Free from a bra my breasts wobble and shake. However, if wobbling and shaking are issues I might look into getting a girdle for my generous ass before casting aspersions elsewhere.
If not modesty, then I turn my eye to aesthetics. To perk or not to perk. Haul up the grapefruits on my chest a few inches and I’m that much closer to a beautiful woman.
Back pain and sagging tits. Bound flesh and conformed image. This is what bras might be doing for me? Adventurous spirit firmly in hand, I resolved to go a week without bras. I realize that in doing this I call up many feminist and social themes. That was not my intent; my intent was to survive with a minimum of madness.
Day one was irritating, as my nipples rubbed fabric with more attention than they’d had in weeks.
Day two the pain set in; my breasts were free-hanging, sore, and cranky.
Day three I struggled at my closet, trying to find something to cover the sheer revelation of aureole peeking through the white linen of my favorite shirt.
Day four in the morning hurt the most. My nipples throbbed, a tiny constant ache. By that afternoon they’d calmed a bit, but that day it was windy and frigid outside, and I remembered the warmth of that extra fabric layer with fondness.
Day five I almost threw in the towel; I put a synthetic, scratchy shirt on in the morning without thinking, and the irritation almost crippled me. That evening I changed to a low-necked sundress and self consciously kept glancing downward at my mismatched cleavage.
Day six was the first morning I pulled a shirt on without the odd sensation of missing a step. With a clinging tank top in place I felt both self conscious and sexy, the lines of my back uninterrupted for the first time in years. My nipples were insistently cold, as though my body couldn’t pump enough blood to their surface. They clamored for their cozy foamy cups.
Day seven I regretted my linen shirt again. I put myself in profile before my bedroom’s full length mirror and watched my breasts rise and fall with my breathing.
Without a bra my breasts are no longer a blank spot on my body’s radar. They shift, they move, they critique my shirt fabric and make themselves known. The discomfort of pinched underwire and shoulder straps fades to be replaced by sensitive tipped skin and the odd feeling of hard nipples all the time. It’s a curious mix and an uncertain trade-off; the discomfort I know compared with the discomfort I’m only just learning. The entire week I felt as though I was perched on the invisible edge of understanding something I couldn’t define.
The experiment ended this morning.
I am not wearing a bra today.
