There are few pieces of daily clothing quite as controversial as the bra. It’s a subject that tends to bring up complex feelings in people. On one hand, bras have a reputation for being uncomfortable and painful, made of scratchy fabrics, and with straps and underwires that dig into your flesh. On the other, they’re an essential supportive device for many, especially for most with large breasts, who depend on them to reduce back pain throughout the day and be able to exercise comfortably. They are sexy, as in a symbol of female sexuality and liberation, of self-love and confidence. They are sexy, as in an ill-fitting expectation forced upon us by advertisements and men, which clashes against our own desires and comfort. Feminism created the bra; feminism eschewed it. A bra is a representation of vanity: self-important, self-effacing, performative, necessary. As such, the relationship most people who wear bras have with them is … complicated. What is it about this little piece of clothing that has given it so many facets?
History of the Bra
The story of brassieres is itself a contradiction. The earliest examples of what we may call a bra date back to the Minoan Civilization, one of the precursors of what we would now call the ancient Greeks. Later on, in the Diocletian era, Roman murals in Villa Romana del Casale show athletes wearing strophion, or bands of cloth tied about women’s breasts in order to provide support. Throughout history, women have come up with hundreds of clever ways to deal with their boobs, either to keep them out of the way while they lead their lives or to help shape them for the fashions of the era. Still, what we now call a bra is actually a very recent invention.
The creation of the modern bra dates back to the tail end of the 19th century. Its precursor is, of course, the corset, another piece of clothing that has been much maligned. I feel it’s important to note here that things like bras and corsets are what is known as foundation garments — or, to put it in simple English, articles of clothing meant to be worn under clothes to create an appropriate silhouette, or foundation, for the fashion of the era. As such, corsets did not develop by themselves, but instead evolved from previous garments, such as stays, in order to respond to the changing fashions of the 19th century.
Unlike what we may believe, corsets don’t usually pinch your ribcage and organs. They work mostly by redistributing soft tissue, mostly fat and flesh. To achieve a narrower waist, they shift the tissue away from the waist area and squish it upwards and downwards. This, for the vast majority of women of the era, would have made their waist one to three inches smaller at most, instead creating the illusion of a waspish waist by making the hips and bust area look proportionally bigger. This was achieved not only through the shifting of flesh, but also through padding, similarly to how modern push-up bras work. Corsets would then be worn on top of a shift (a thin dress-like undergarment — think nightgown) which would protect the skin from chafing, and under voluminous skirts, which would make the hips look even larger, and create a bigger contrast with the much smaller waist area.
Additionally, not all corsets were made the same. The invention of the sewing machine allowed for undergarments to be much more complicated than before, but there was still a massive difference between the corsets worn by a working-class woman during her day job and those worn by noble ladies for their grand evening parties. Those intended to be worn by laborers were made much thinner and with significantly less boning, instead relying on techniques such as cording to provide stability and support while still remaining flexible enough for daily use. In contrast, those meant to be worn under haute couture gowns were made to order, much stiffer, and more intricate in order to satisfy the vision of the fashion house that designed the outfit. Even these more restrictive special occasion garments were usually not tied tight enough to cause pain, instead relying on excellent craftsmanship to give the proper silhouette.
Tightlacing, or the use of a corset much smaller than a woman’s natural waist, which necessitates a large amount of force to tie, is well-known to us through movie scenes, but was actually quite rare in real life, and usually limited to the upper classes. Don’t get me wrong; corsets are hardly the most comfortable piece of clothing ever created. But they were manageable enough, and enabled women to wear the fashions of the time without suffering from the pain caused from the waistband of a twenty-pound skirt digging into your skin.
Why, then, do we picture corsets as torture devices? The answer is simple: misogyny. Such fashion was the domain of women, but when you live in a society as misogynistic as Victorian England, where women are seen as inherently vain and silly, then fashion must, too, become inherently vain and silly. Many men of the era, especially some prominent physicians, began to advocate against the use of garments such as corsets. They used extreme examples of tightlacing as case studies, and determined that corsets caused rib deformities and harmed women’s reproductive organs. Corsets were disparaged as vulgar and inappropriate, and the women who used them were characterized as self-obsessed enough to damage their health for such a ridiculous, unimportant thing as fashion — or even worse, as women of loose morals obsessed with attaining men’s attention.
Here, we see the contradictions of sexism. Women were often prized for their beauty and femininity, to the point where young ladies, who needed to secure a husband in order to secure their future, learned how to weaponize them and use them to their advantage. With what little was left to them, women were the primary drivers of their own fashion, taking ownership of their lives in the few ways they could. In this way, fashion was often developed directly for men, but more directly for women. What was disparaged as vanity can be more closely described as cleverness. Many women even grew to love fashion, a reality often seen and treated as exclusively theirs. It became not only a tool, but a personal pleasure. Women created something new, something that, even as it emerged from the expectations of men, was still theirs, a way to assert themselves within the frameworks of a world that despised them. But, as is often the trouble of trying to survive within a system that oppresses you, fashion also became another tool for the patriarchy to utilize against women. To care for their appearance was not an act of control, or of perseverance, but was turned into one of vanity — a ridiculous whim by foolish creatures. As such, corsets were demonized by the patriarchal system that created them.
However, the anti-corset activist would soon be joined by an unexpected ally: the first-wave feminists. These women were responding to the patriarchal pressures upon fashion, and saw corsets, as well as many other of the period’s elaborate fashions, as a form of oppression. Many believed in the supposed health detriments of corsets, and this further intensified their disdain for them. They called for a total reform of women’s fashion. From the 1850s onwards, these women began to introduce a wide variety of changes to women’s fashion, such as the introduction of pants, and the change to the significantly lighter crinoline skirt. By the end of the 1800s, the corset was slowly but surely beginning to lose popularity amongst women, who began to wish for less restrictive fashions to match the new lightness of the Edwardian Era.
The bra then emerged as a response to this pressure. The first proto-brassieres acted more like a two-part corset: with an upper portion meant to support the bust, and a separate, lower portion for shaping the waist. Still, it’s generally agreed that the first ‘bra’ was created by Caresse Crosby in 1910, back when she was only 19 years of age. At the time, she was preparing for her debutante ball, but found that her corset didn’t quite fit right under her dress, so, using two handkerchiefs and some ribbon, she created a sort of boob sling. Her outfit was much admired by her peers at the ball, and after they asked for her secret, the rest was history.
Still, it took time for bras to catch on, even after Crosby began to manufacture them. In the 1920s, she would sell the patent for her brassiere to the Warner Brother’s Corset Company (and no, there’s no relation to the movie studio). The first commercial bras didn’t even have cups as we know them now, and when they did begin to use shaped pockets for the breast tissue, these were made out of stretchy fabric to make the garment one size fits all. This contrasts with corsets, which had to be produced in a wide variety of sizes, as even small differences in measurements can make one very uncomfortable to wear. Even with the cup size system being introduced in the 30s, bras were still far cheaper and easier to manufacture than corsets. The shift from the corset to the brassiere was gradual, and it wasn’t until WWI and WWII that bras truly became the norm. The redirection of materials for the war effort, most notably steel, finally succeeded in forcing out the corset from modern life in favor of the brassiere and the girdle.
The brassiere and girdle combo shines brightest in the 1950s. Bullet bras and sweater girls turned this decade into a particularly bra-centric one, where the bra became the protagonist of women’s fashion. On top of these bold new styles, bras also became more accessible to produce with the advent of synthetic fibers, which were not only cheaper and more versatile, but also easier to launder. By this point, bras were very close to their modern counterparts, already featuring underwires, stretchy bands, and a sizing system based upon cup and band sizes.
The next biggest development in the world of bras would occur in 1964, with the development of the Wonderbra by Louise Poirier. While it wasn’t the first bra model to carry the name Wonderbra, it was the first to implement the feature the company is most known for today: the push-up. This marked a drastic change in the preferred shape of bras, and they would continue to take a rounder and rounder shape over the following decades.
Since then, the biggest changes to the humble brassiere have occurred either due to new material availability, such as the advent of foam cups, or as a response to changing fashion trends, such as the plunge bra meant to be worn with deeper necklines. Most notably, the creation of the sports bra in the 70s, which is, from a design perspective, really an entirely different thing to a regular bra. Apart from this one exception, the bra may have evolved, but the basic construction principles remain mostly unchanged.
Bras and Feminism in the 20th Century
Before moving on to the modern state of the fashion industry, there is one (very important) myth I would like to bust: feminists did not burn bras in the 60s and 70s. Or, better said, it wasn’t a trend for second-wave feminists to burn bras. While there are some isolated instances of feminist gatherings engaging in bra-burning, they occurred mostly within the context of events designed for women to burn or discard the things which they felt the patriarchy had pushed on to them. Such was the case at the Miss America protests that inspired this myth. The protestors had chosen the Miss America pageant to target due to its nationwide notoriety. They expressed concerns with the commercialization of women’s bodies, and hoped that this event would call attention to the then-fledging women’s liberation movement.
It was journalist Lindsy Van Gelder who first called attention to the bra-burning. As a supporter of the movement, the punchy phrase was meant to highlight the symbolism behind the protest and draw comparisons to the burning of Vietnam war draft cards. In reality, the women burned many different items, such as high heels, false lashes, and copies of magazines like Playboy. The bra was just one of many such symbols, and was chosen by Van Gelder for no other particular reason than, essentially, marketing and visibility. Regrettably, the phrase was perhaps too punchy. It soon caught on not amongst newly minted supporters of the feminist movement, but amongst their detractors, who used it to create an image of man-hating, bra-burning feminists more obsessed with appearances and sex than with true equality.
Despite the myths, this story is actually a great illustration of the three driving forces behind the cultural phenomenon that is the bra: the push of the patriarchy, the pull of feminism, and the perpetual background noise of the commercialization and commodification of women and their bodies. There are those who say bras are a tool of liberation, and those to whom bras are a tool of oppression, but I cannot in good conscience give the right to either camp. The truth is, bras have a tumultuous history, and cannot, in good faith, be divorced from either influence. On top of this, it has often been the not-so-invisible hand of the market that has had the final say in the object we call the bra. This last one has, perhaps, had much more of an effect on bras than we commonly realize.
We are all probably familiar with the idea that bras are uncomfortable because they cater to male sexual fantasies. We see the complaints every time the Victoria’s Secret Angels walk down their runway, and we see it constantly illustrated in bra advertisements that promise to turn you into a bombshell sex doll. It’s the ever-prevalent idea that sex sells, and, as we all know, sex in our world is synonymous with men. I seriously doubt anyone has ever claimed that cheap polyester lace is a comfortable material (not to mention it’s usually hideous, but that’s a rant for another time), but what if I told you that there’s an even bigger reason as to why bras cause so much discomfort?
It’s all rather simple. Capitalism does not respond to the patriarchy above all: it responds to profit. Misogyny, then, is simply one of capitalism’s chosen routes for maximizing profits, but it’s hardly the only one. The real reason your bra is so uncomfortable is because your discomfort is terribly cheap to produce.
And I don’t just mean materials here — although terrible, cheap fabrics certainly do not help. It’s because you’re wearing the wrong bra size. You shouldn’t feel bad; most women are wearing a bra size that is very, very far from correct. If your boobs threaten to pop out from the underside of your bra during the day, if the straps dig into your shoulders, if the back of your band rests several inches higher than the front, if you suffer from bra-associated back and shoulder pain, if your underwire pokes you or tends to rip through the fabric of your bra, if your breast tissue spills out the top of the cup, if you have “armpit rolls,” or if the gore (that little piece of fabric between the cups) of your bra doesn’t lay flush against your ribcage, then I can almost guarantee that you’re wearing the wrong size.
Firstly, let’s discuss how bra sizes even work. It’s actually pretty simple. Your bra size is made up of primarily two measurements: the band size, and the cup size. For U.S. sizes, the band size is your underbust, measured by wrapping a measuring tape around your ribcage, right under your breasts, and it’s grouped every two inches. So, a 32-band bra corresponds to an underbust measurement of approximately 31-32 inches. To find your cup size, you measure right around the fullest part of your bust. Using your bust measurement, you then subtract the underbust measurement, and the resulting number is equivalent to your cup size. That is to say, an A-cup corresponds to a one-inch difference between your bust and underbust, a B-cup to a two-inch difference, a C-cup to a three-inch difference, and so on and so forth. If your band measurement is 27 inches, and your bust is 32, your resulting bra size would be roughly a 28DD.
You may have noticed something weird about this. You may picture a B-cup in your head, and say, well, that doesn’t really seem like there’s only two inches of difference in circumference. If you noticed this, you would be right. You see, most of us have an idea about how big certain cup sizes are, and most of us would be wrong. What we think of as a B-cup is much more often closer to a D-cup. It’s not really accurate to say that an A-cup is small, a C-cup is average, and a DD-cup is massive. In fact, most true DDs actually have breasts that would be considered on the smaller side of average.
Why is there such a discrepancy between our mental images and what bra sizes truly look like? Here is where capitalism comes into play. Let’s think about clothing sizes. In the U.S., an XS is roughly equivalent to a 27-inch underbust, and an XXL is roughly a 44-inch underbust. If we start at a band size of 28, and end at a-44, that’s roughly eight band sizes. Now, a bra isn’t manufactured solely out of a band. To have a somewhat inclusive bra range that could cover most straight sizes, I would say the minimum would be a U.S. A-cup (1 inch difference) to an H-cup (8 inch difference). To be clear, this is not a truly inclusive range. It’s more of what I see as the bare minimum. With eight band sizes and eight cup sizes, this would result in a whopping 64 different bra sizes that would need to be drafted and manufactured.
Now, let’s look at what we actually have. Most brands go from a 32-inch band to maybe a 42. Cup sizes in brick-and-mortar stores most commonly range from A to DD. That is five band sizes and five cup sizes, or 25 total sizes, is only 39% of what a basic range would be. This is significantly cheaper to produce for brands, and as such, they began to find ways to fit women into this much narrower range.
The most popular method for this is through the use of the +4 fitting method. This doesn’t affect the size of the bra itself, but instead tells women to add four inches to their underband measurement to find their band size, and then use the difference between that and their bust to find their cup size. As a side note, this is supposedly a carry-over from the times when bras were made from fabrics with little or no stretch. However, as someone who both sews and drafts clothing patterns, I am deeply skeptical of this claim, as even a fitted garment with no stretch would only have about an extra inch of wearing ease. This method is favored by large retailers such as Victoria’s Secret, Soma, and Aerie. If our earlier example of a woman with a 27-inch underbust and a 32-inch overbust were to be fitted under this system, she would be told she is a 32A. This would make her bra’s band the size of her whole bust, but it would squeeze her in real nicely into the cheap sizes. Then, of course, after this bra is terribly uncomfortable, they would sell her a dozen other bras, supposedly designed to be more comfortable, or designed for small boobs, or made out of some type of superfoam that will magically fit right this time. She would then move on with the knowledge that bras are just inherently uncomfortable, since she even got an in-store fitting and they still don’t fit right.
As a result, most women in the United States are wearing bras with bands that are far too big and cups that are far too small. This is why a lot of people believe that a DD is a huge cup size, instead of what it truly is: average, if not a bit below that. If this is making you question your life, you’re not the only one. A simple Google search will turn up hundreds of women, who, upon being measured correctly for the first time, are now suffering from massive sticker shock.
If you would like to find the true size, then I highly recommend the ABraThatFits calculator. It uses a total of six different measurements to arrive at a more accurate result, since boobs are kinda weird. This helps it account for normal variations, such as projection, sagging, or tissue density, which can affect how different sizes fit. Of course, it’s not carving your “real size” into stone; everyone’s body is different, and as a result, what may be a perfect numeric fit may, for a variety of reasons, be a little off for you. The bra you get might be too shallow, or too projected, or the cups too far apart or too close together. Some people who like their cleavage to really pop go down one cup size for that hanging-on-for-dear-life look. I, personally, like to size up my band from a 28 to a 30, since I have sensory issues and a band that’s too snug gets on my nerves a little. It’s a matter of personal preference for every bra-wearer, but the calculator should get you into the general ballpark, and you’ll find that the result is far more flattering and comfortable than you could have expected.
All in all, bras are complicated. They’ve got a fascinating history, and have become symbolic of so many different things that perhaps they’re not really symbolic of anything at all. Personally, I am of the opinion that fashion is meant to serve you, in whichever way you wish for it to do so. If your main concern is comfort, or if it’s an impeccable outward presentation, there’s no right way to wear a bra (although there’s certainly quite a few wrong ways). I hope that this article has left you with a little more appreciation for the wonderful complexities of our clingy little companions.