Thoughts on (not) wearing a bra

This afternoon I did something quite radical. It’s not the sort of thing I would usually do, not at all, but for some reason I flung caution to the light north-easterly breeze and went ahead anyway. This afternoon, I walked around outside, in daylight hours, without wearing a bra.

It felt … wrong. Not only did I know full well that I risked provoking the onset of that dreadful condition my mother always warned me about, Cooper’s Droop, I also felt horribly undressed. Not naked. But not fit to be seen in public either.

A bra is the one item of clothing that, for women (and a few men) marks the difference between being dressed and being not-dressed. No matter what else you are wearing, without a bra, you cannot venture beyond your front door. In fact, I would go so far as to say that not wearing a bra in public is worse than not wearing makeup, perish the thought.

I’ve always looked in wonder at women who go around in public not wearing bras. How brave they are, to dismiss social and sartorial convention with such nonchalance. How dismissive, too, of the feelings of those around them. I once worked with a woman who had breastfed two children but eschewed any form of mammarial corralling. She also routinely wore strappy little tops. Her coworkers found this upsetting, though I’m not sure if anyone took the matter to HR; harassment by saggy boobs is not a common complaint, at least not to my knowledge. God knows what the clients thought.

For most of us, that peculiar, familiar feeling of being constricted, of straps pulling on shoulders while these odd fleshy protuberances of ours — what Carrie’s mother called “dirtypillows” in the Stephen King novel — are cradled, lifted and/or smooshed together, is something we get used to from the moment our mothers present us with our first bra. There’s a very specific set of physical sensations associated with this item of clothing: the way the clasp scratches your back, the way the underwires and the straps dig into your flesh so that when you take the bra off, they leave red, itching tracks in your skin.

The very discomfort involved in putting on a bra is what is so reassuring about wearing one. It’s a reminder that even if you are not in charge of your life, your bust is under control. (Bust? Bust? Who on earth came up with that word? According to one male friend — a critically acclaimed author with a stupendous vocabulary — who pronounced upon this very issue this past weekend, a much better word is “titties” (pronounced “tiddies”).)

That’s the thing with (real) breasts. They’re wobbly and dangly and, when not safely tethered within embroidered swatches of 82% polyester, 16% nylon, way too susceptible to the lure of gravity. They are, of course, an ongoing reminder of the way of all flesh, the steady decline as the years weigh upon us. Our boobs start off small and pert and end up dangling at our knees. In the beginning they’re alarming signs of impending adulthood; in the end, they’re props in Hymie and Rachel jokes.

So, in walking around the garden sans bra, I am taking risks. I’m embracing the notion that we can’t control everything, and that sometimes we have to let go blah blah fishpaste quote Eckhart Tolle etc. (Celebrating, too, while I can still pass the pencil test). I won’t do it too often though. I am far too terrified of Cooper and his Droop.