Let me preface this by saying I am a man, and smoked a little too much, so I’m sitting here thinking… what is or was the original purpose of a bra? Weight support? Vanity? Covering the nips so people’s eyes met your eyes and you can have a normal conversation? Like what’s it all about?
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Large breasts are heavy. Redistributing the weight helps the back.
Also for some people seeing nipples is scary for some reason.
Ewww… Nipples
Which reminds me, I need to get milk on the way home.
Kekekekeke
Milk industry: We need to resume the bra burning movement
It’s ok, Homelander.
This. At least that’s my understanding. When I lived in South Florida, one of my friends said she was going to try going braless for the summer, a few weeks later she complained that going braless made the under part of her breasts chaff / irritate. Heat, humidity, and skin friction is bad mmmmkay.
seeing nipples is scary for some reason.
Scary nipples
I’m a 36G and wear the bra because it’s super annoying to have them sway when I walk. That’s the main reason for me. I find it more comfortable to be braless, but I really shouldn’t do it in public. It’s attracts more attention than I usually want.
This is why I prefer winter, I can wear my bulky coat and go as braless as I want, despite the 40J I’m suppose to wear
38H (UK sizing) here.
I still don’t go braless even in winter because they hang low, and that embarrasses me. Existing at all embarrasses me, so take that with a grain of salt.
Existing is agony, but I just can’t care anymore what people think about my tits. I’m the one who has to wear them, and bras hurt (well, I’m autistic and they hit a lot of my brain hurting points) so screw it, I’m going to the wawa in a winter coat and no cares.
Without a bra, you risk getting a harmonic resonant swing going, and toppling over like the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
Good thing I live in the desert. Not many bridges around here.
Having 36G breasts, does it cause back pain? If so, how do you manage it?
It caused more paint when I was wearing ill fitting bras in both size and shape. I found r/abrathatfits in my mid-twenties and it changed everything for me. I mostly wear unlined mid coverage demi bra shapes now.
I do still get back pain like just below the shoulder blades in the center of my back. But that’s been there for years and I’m used to it now
Thanks for sharing!
I’m a small breasted woman who does not wear a bra. The reasons of practicality and comfort are described below for bigger chested people (I didn’t see mentioned that if they are really big and you try to run without serious, sometimes two sports bras on they can fly up and hit you in the face). I do sometimes accidentally hit my nipple on something, which I don’t like.
But in my experience, people get upset at seeing boob shaped boobs. Strangers tell me I should be wearing a bra. They want bra shaped boobs. Nipples are scary.
I haven’t worn one since middle school when it was new and fun and made me feel “grown up” (but uncomfortable). But some years back I got shingles and apparently permanent nerve damage on the nerve group that would be right under the bra band on my back and anything irritating it makes me feel like I’m on fire so it’s just not going to happen. Certainly not in the name of sparing the general public the scandal of seeing boob shaped boobs in a loose T shirt. At the very most I will use silicone tape to hide my nipples in very formal situations.
I’m not busty either, but I hate the feeling of my chest moving around or hanging. Sport’s bra’s are the only thing I wear. Even while sleeping.
I’m a man, and that’s how I feel about boxers and being nude. I don’t like that dangle feel of uncontrolled swaying on a sensitive part.
A kindred spirit. Saggy/floppy bodyparts man…
Ngl. I’ve hit my nipples on things and it sucks. My dogs have ran their nails across them and they burn for the rest of the day. I totally feel that pain
However I’m a guy and have had to apologize multiple times to women because my eyes just trail down to the chest. I don’t know psychosomatics of it, but it’s not something I consciously intend to do.
Beyond that, I don’t mind whether women do or don’t wear a bra. Breastfeed in public if needed. It all should truly be none of my business. However, I donate to breast cancer research every year for a reason. And that reason is I think about boobs. My wife has my favorite pair though.
Anyway, I digress, I never really knew the original purpose of them and figured I could satiate my curiosity and have a conversation about boobs with people
Curious why you don’t just ask your wife.
Good question! She said, and I quote “I don’t know. What the fuck is going on in your head right now?”
It’s very sexy to see nipples through clothes. I don’t know why but it’s just much hotter than seeing bare breasts.
Maybe people ask you to wear a bra because it’s making guys get distracted.
They do, but they shouldn’t. You should not ask a stranger to change their behavior because you cannot control your own. Maybe family would do it for you, but even then it’s can be a shitty thing to do.
You can’t ask guys to not get distracted. It’s not a choice they are making.
You absolutely can ask them that. Noticing it is not the same thing as getting distracted by it. Allowing your focus to be highjacked by the environment is a sign of a weak mind. If you went to work and a coworker told you the shape of your nose was distracting to them, and you need to wear a mask so they can continue to work, that is on the coworker, not you. It is absurd to put someone else in charge of what needs to be done to stop you from being distracted.
People need to control themselves, no one else has that ability.
Won’t happen :) And disagree about the weak mind as well. Has nothing to do with mind, it’s hormones. Ask teenage boys to have their hands on their cover and exercise their willpower… :)
So there is a fascinating historical rabbit hole here that I went down a few years ago. I think it is Nicole Rudolph who did a deep dive video into the history of bras and other shapewear. If you smoked a lot and like history I recommend it.
Bras and similar garments give the proper ‘shape’ for the clothes and cultural norms of the moment, and give people comfort and support if they need it. Lots of people need something sturdy to keep everything in place, but it’s also still a very grey area of social acceptance to choose not wear one.Yes yes that’s exactly it. You see nipples are sensitive and boobs tend to jiggle and sway around when one moves, it can get very uncomfortable. So a bra reduces friction and accidental brushing against objects and clothing, helps support the weight and yes also helps shape the bosom. All that.
The original purpose of the bra was to let women move freely without fearing their breasts might pop out of their dresses iirc. But I think women used to wrap their chests with a tight cloth if they had to heavy physical work before bras as we know them today. Take this with a grain of salt, I didn’t fact check any.
Right, like if you just rephrase OP’s question as what’s the point of a sports bra, it becomes more obvious. Everyone knows what a sports bra is for, right? Well with significant enough breasts, virtually all movement benefits from some support.
The weird thing to me is how women with very small breasts can still sometimes adhere to a strict bra regime. Some of it is cultural programming, including the terror that your nipples might show through a shirt. This IMO is not worth the cost and maintenance and restriction of a bra.
When people poop on Muslims for covering their women or wonder how some women could ever want to wear a veil, I like to remind them that we do exactly the same thing in the West. It’s just that our bar is set at a different level. No we don’t lose our shit if women show their faces but we still lose our shit if their nipples show.
Yes you have a point with that but it really does help reduce friction and sensitivity in the area. I think I’d still wear one if I was more on the flat chested end just because of that reason. Everyone is different
Make:
- Bouncy things less bouncy
- Pokey things less pokey
- Gravity less gravit-y
Advantages of bras:
-
Look nice (if you’re into that look, which many people are)
-
Keep your nipples from chafing
-
Support/containment for larger boobs
-
Keep prudish people from being mad at your nipples
-
Can be worn without a shirt for sports if they cover enough real estate
-
When breastfeeding, help catch/absorb leaks
Disadvantages of bras:
- Uncomfortable if not fitted right
- Sweaty as fuck on hot days
- Expensive
- Many have to be hand washed if they are fancy
I would say I wear bras about 30-50% of the time and it’s usually for either support/chafing prevention or looks. The rest of the time I can’t be bothered. I’m also lucky to not have super large breasts. I know women who do may find a good fitted bra to be more comfortable than no bra.
When I was breastfeeding I wore them all the time though because it is super awkward to leak through your shirt in public.
Edited to add bullet points bc I suck at lemmy formatting
Just wondering, but why did you use punctuation in the last half of your comment, but not the first?
I think she wrote the pros and cons as a vertically stacked list, but formatting forces it into a paragraph, unless you add a double space at the end of the line.
So this:
Advantages of bras: Look nice (if you’re into that look, which many people are) Keep your nipples from chafing Support/containment for larger boobs Keep prudish people from being mad at your nipples Can be worn without a shirt for sports if they cover enough real estate When breastfeeding, help catch/absorb leaks
Becomes this:
Advantages of bras:
Look nice (if you’re into that look, which many people are)
Keep your nipples from chafing
Support/containment for larger boobs
Keep prudish people from being mad at your nipples
Can be worn without a shirt for sports if they cover enough real estate
When breastfeeding, help catch/absorb leaksOr, with the addition of bullet points:
Advantages of bras:
- Look nice (if you’re into that look, which many people are)
- Keep your nipples from chafing
- Support/containment for larger boobs
- Keep prudish people from being mad at your nipples
- Can be worn without a shirt for sports if they cover enough real estate
- When breastfeeding, help catch/absorb leaks
Aw damn thanks for fixing that! Yes I wrote it as a list and yes I forgot the double space. Still haven’t figured out bullet points in lemmy
No problem at all - and bullets are just a star and a space, then your text and then the two spaces at the end, and then repeat :-)
-
I am also reliably told that the removal of a bra - particularly a tight one - at the end of a working day is almost as wonderful as the feeling of taking your socks off when you get home.
Bliss.
Wait what? I wear socks at all times unless I’m in water or asleep. Mostly because my feet are always cold.
I do enjoy the ski sock peel at the end of a day on the slopes though!
I think taking off a pair of jeans is a better equivalent for guys. Or any piece of clothing that isn’t comfortable.
Taking off the belt on your jeans.
Bro why are you wearing uncomfortable jeans? I get why people wear uncomfortable fashionable/dressy items but jeans are all about comfort.
Jeans are mid comfort for me. They look good when out but honestly I don’t want to lay down on my couch in jeans. Especially summer. Usually I change into gym shorts, sweatpants, or underwear.
That’s a good point. I typically wear basketball shorts as much as possible unless I’m leaving the house.
I have also never even considered taking my socks off when I get home. But if I lived in a warm country, I would.
Yes, all of those things. Also it makes exercising more comfortable.
Have you ever tried running balls free, same idea.
Can’t speak for all, but back pain and comfort. Also, large breasts can have difficulty getting air under there which can cause irritations. Sometimes it’s just to keep your breasts off your stomach. I wear sports bras and have “special” bras, but my hatred of bras has really dimished when I accepted sports bra life.
I also just don’t like them “loose?” Like, I don’t want to bend over and have them go awol, even if I’m at home. Also, can store stuff in the bra and I have dropped my phone on the floor thinking I had a bra to catch it 😭
I am someone who has had very large breasts and fairly small breasts in my lifetime. When my boobs were big, wearing bras was manageability and comfort. They were heavy and hurt my back and were always in the way. In addition, it was hard to do any sports or be active without being, what I called, double strapped: having a bra with a sports bra over the top. This is how I got through high school.
Now that I’ve both had a breast reduction and lost a lot of weight, my boobs are smaller and I don’t wear a bra often. When I do, it’s a vanity thing, I think my boobs look better under some clothes when wearing a bra, and a utility thing, like when I’m working out or doing something strenuous. Also, I wear one when I’m at work because it seems more appropriate.
I’m actually quite interested in dress history. I’m an engineer at heart and clothing is fundamentally also an engineering problem (and design of course). It’s an area of engineering that was always dominated by women and you can sometimes see the novel approaches that brings.
For example historical corsets were actually quite comfortable when fitted right. One reason why is actually breast support. Predecessors to the modern Bra did exist but were not in fashion as a more compressed looking bust and later a shaped silhouette was in fashion.
Also it’s cool what tricks one can use to form the silhouette without extremely compressing the waist (which is how many modern people often think is the function of a corset).
I recommend Bernadettes channel on this topic: link
I saw the picture first before reading your comment and thought it was from her channel. Bernadette is awesome.
Breasts can get heavy, and the sensation of gravity constantly pulling down on the skin of your chest and on your soft tissue can be very uncomfortable. If you get sweaty, moisture can get trapped underneath and cause rashes or fungal infections. Moving about, they can get in the way of your arm movements and if jumping or running the movement can be downright painful. Imagine piercing your ears with heavy weights and then shaking your head. You would want to minimize their movement!
Historically, women have used woven cloth bandeaus, breast bands, belts, straps, stays, corsets, bralets, bodices and all sorts of things to try to minimize movement and support breast tissue. Bras are just the most common contemporary thing.
So with all you mentioned (and please don’t misunderstand my intention for asking. I truly am unaware) does it cause damage to the actually mammary glands in the breast? Or are you just referring to skin deep damage?
It can cause some damage, in that the tissues inside the breast can lengthen and lose their firmness. It doesn’t damage function in any way but it could be considered premature aging. There’s that photo series of the white woman with the African tribeswomen and they’re comparing their breasts,
NSFW
because the African women were so interested in how her breasts were a different shape than theirs. If you’ve seen pictures of people from cultures who don’t wear clothing that supports breasts, you can see the difference in shape that constantly fighting against gravity makes.
If you’ve seen pictures of people from cultures who don’t wear clothing that supports breasts, you can see the difference in shape that constantly fighting against gravity makes.
There are a lot of factors that can contribute to sagging, but bralessness doesn’t seem to be one. There are studies indicating that bras likely weaken breast tissue over time, making sagging more likely in people who wear them regularly. Of course, even those studies are tricky to generalize to the broader population because of how many factors there are to control for (breast size, pregnancies, tobacco use, genes, etc etc etc). What we do know is that the difference in breast shape from one whole ethnic group to another is largely attributable to genetics, and as for the photo: those women simply have very different bodies.
Interestingly, photos of African women have been used countless times throughout history to dishonestly market bras to fashionable Westerners. The image of African women who simply have a different body type from their own has frightened millions of white ladies into bras.
Hmm I didn’t know that, thanks for the info. There’s probably a major factor of sample bias in that perception too, as Western women who wear bras and whose breasts naturally look like the African women’s wouldn’t be recognized as being similar, unless you’re intimate or sharing a home. It seems I fell for the propaganda, or “bra-paganda”, if you will.
I know exactly what you’re talking about, and again please excuse my ignorance and bluntness, but saggy boobs don’t necessarily mean lack of milk production?
Correct, in fact size, shape, perkiness, all of the cosmetic factors seem to have no correlation to milk production. The major factors for an individual’s milk supply seem to be age, genetics, stress and hormone levels.
No I have another question about Perkiness, but I’ll throw that question at my wife. Thanks for the info!
Size of boobs has no bearing on milk production. We all have the same equipment in there, more or less, most of the difference in breast size is just fat. I never got big boobs while nursing and made so much milk, it’s made on demand when the baby nurses, not stored in the boobs!
I have never needed one for support, but for the past 20, 30 years the US has had some sort of weird rule that only smooth lumps are professional, no hint of actual breast shape. That’s easing in non-professional public life, finally, so I don’t wear one a lot of the time, but at work wear something with light padding to make that weird Barbie doll lump shape.
Sports bra for running, yes that serves a practical function - holds the boobs still so they don’t bounce and hurt. So if one is more endowed and bouncing in everyday life, I imagine that a bra with structural support would be more comfortable than nothing.
I really wanted to answer that the point is right at the front of each cup!
It’s definitely a me problem, not a you problem, but I do find nips distracting. I’d like to get better at not being distracted by visible nips and I’m here for that journey.
I’m okay with being distracted.
If a woman wants to wear a short, short skirt to work, or no bras, then so be it. I will probably stare when no one is looking, but I will for sure remain professional otherwise.
What’s the difference between this scenario and having a mesmerizing painting in the common area.
Shit, I’m objectifying women!!!
Let’s just say that a dude with a good pair of biceps would be equally distracting, and I wouldn’t have an issue with that.
