Transcript | Ep. 89: How to Go Braless

[Stinger]

Chidera: You know, your boobs deserve a break. You know, let your boobs be on vacation. It's fine.

Cristen: Yeah, I guess they’re going through the pandemic, too.

Chidera: They're doing amazing. Exactly. You gotta look down and tell your boobs you are doing amazing girls. I'm proud of you.

Cristen: You're doing great gals! You hang in there.

Chidera: Yes. Literally hang in there.

[Laughter]

[Theme music]

Cristen: Caroline, in the VERY early days of pandemic lockdowns, do you remember allllll the jokes about at least I don’t have to wear a bra for a month?!

Caroline: That feels SO long ago, but yes!

Cristen: Well, I still remember one night, I was at home — of course — scrolling through Twitter, and a headline from the Daily Mail sent me through the roof: "Not Wearing a Bra During Lockdown Could Leave You w Saggy Breasts, Experts Warn"

Caroline: Gross, but also The Daily Mail is trash …

Cristen: But they weren’t the only outlet spouting out those kinds of stories! I couldn’t believe that during a global pandemic, women were being told to keep our bras on lest we emerge from lockdown with saggy tits?? Like it truly blew my mind so much that I asked if we could do an episode about bralessness to figure out how we even got here.

Caroline: Yeah. As liberated as we allegedly are these days, you’d think that bralessness would be less of a big deal. But as our first guest Chidera Eggerue knows well, it definitely still attracts a lot of looks…

Chidera Eggerue: When I first stopped wearing a bra, the first thing I noticed was how much people would notice your nipples. And it's funny because you can see the moment, you can just see it in their face when they notice. And it's like you're gonna have to get used to this because guys have nipples. And when guys’ nipples are poking through their shirt, no one makes a fuss of it. So it started becoming funny to me, like I started just playing this little game with myself, where it’s like I could count how many people have I mortified today with the presence of my nipples under my shirt?

Caroline: Chidera Eggerue is a braless wonder, truly. Among other things, she’s a London-based author and creator of the hashtag #SaggyBoobsMatter. And we’re talking to Chidera today because her double-D, bra-free, saggy-boob self-love is an unabashed middle finger to societal breastspectations.

Cristen: And speaking of breastpectations, the internet reflects just how confused many of us are about what kind of support boobs actually need. Like, when you ask google whether boobs need bras, half the results are like YES! Wear a bra, or else your boobs will sag. And others are like NO! Not wearing a bra makes your boobs stronger! It’s … a mess.

Caroline: That’s why, after we talk to Chidera, we’re gonna fact check the internet’s bralessness debate and get to the bottom of what actually causes boob sag. And for that, our second guest is a woman who really knows her way around a nip slip, scientifically speaking.

Jenny Burbage: So the skin of the breast effectively provides a large amount of this support because I mean, breast itself has gotten no muscle. It's no bone. So. And unfortunately, as we age, as we all age, the skin gets more elastic and therefore we see everything moving south. And that's going to happen anyway.

Caroline: Jenny Burbage is a biomechanics professor at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. And she’s one of the world’s leading experts on the actual science of how breasts move and what causes added stretching and strain.

All to find out: Why do people give a tit about whether women wear bras or not??

[Stinger]

Chidera: There is no bra in sight, no bras. In fact, the only times that I find myself wearing bras are when I just want to look at my boobs and see how nice they look in a particular bra style. So for me, bra wearing is more like an a one-off fun thing for me, but I don't actually wear bras to leave the house anymore, especially not when I'm going to just leave the house to queue outside a grocery store for like half an hour. What reason, really, am I gonna be wearing a bra when I can just be wearing the same hoodie I've been wearing for the past two weeks? That won't even show. You can't even tell if I'm wearing a bra or not under this triple XL hoodie.

Caroline: Six years ago, Chidera Eggerue broke up with bras for good.

Cristen: And that decision to quit bras was a BIG deal for Chidera. She’d hit puberty during the peak Victoria’s Secret era of the early 2000s, and it didn’t take long for her to realize that her boobs didn’t look like the pushed up, perky melons that models were toting around.

Chidera: So in the UK, we have this department store called Marks and Spencer. They're known for doing like bra fittings and the most comfortable bra. So it's like a rite of passage like coming of age thing to get your first fitting at Marks and Spencer. So I went at 14, 15 years old with my mom, to Marks and Spencer to get my fitting done. And I remember once the lovely lady who had measured me handed me the bra that was, you know, according to the correct measurement, I put the bra on, and in the mirror my boobs looked saggy, but it was a push up bra I was wearing. And the woman on the packaging, her boobs were sitting and they were pushed up and they looked round and they looked perky. And mine just didn't. And that what was where the complex began.

Caroline: Chidera decided that when she turned 18, she wanted to get a boob job for her birthday. Her mom wasn’t convinced.

Chidera: She would just be like, “You don't need to do that. Your body is fine as it is.” But I didn't believe her because it's my mom, and she's biased. And it's like, no, I just need to make this change because I think once I get my boobs done, then I will have a better body.

Caroline: So rather than just say, oh, maybe I'll get a different bra or like dress differently or whatever, like what made you want to get a boob job specifically?

Chidera: Because I knew that it wasn't about the bra. I tried so many bras that I just knew. And even when to look at my boobs when I was naked, they still had a saggy posture to them. So it was like, no bra can do this. It's just that I need a boob job so that it can sit up. And I and I look back now as a 25-year-old at who I was when I was like 18, 17, and all that time I wasted disliking my boobs. For me, it's like I had to learn to change the, to completely change the way that I view my body, change the way that I view sex, change the way that I view men and change the way that I value certain aspects of myself, because if I hold the idea that having saggy boobs makes me undesirable, then what does that say about women who maybe are in their 40s or 50s and their boobs happen to be saggy? Because that's that kind a thing that comes of age or women who have just had children. Am I then with that belief saying that those women who I just mentioned are less deserving of love, less sexy because their bodies have changed? Like it comes down to when you have certain ideas about yourself, you kind of have to challenge it and think, if I said this about someone else, would I be perceived as a cunt, or what?

Cristen: But then … Chidera found boob love in a hopeless place. By the mid-2010s, Rhianna was already becoming iconic for her visible bralessness. So when photos of her nip slips started popping up on Chidera’s Tumblr feed … she was titillated!

Chidera: So I was like, this is so cool that this singer, she's so punk that she's not wearing a bra like that is so punk to me. I'm going to do the same. And I was going to performing arts school at the time, the Brit school. So that was a school where individualism was definitely appreciated and encouraged. So that was a school where individualism was definitely appreciated and encouraged. So I didn't have that fear of what if I get laughed at because it was a performing arts school. So you would expect to find all kinds of characters in an environment like that. But it was something where I definitely used that time to build my confidence, because walking into a canteen full of boys and girls who have their own opinions of you and opinions of everyone else, it really will make you forcefully build character if you choose to do something that's quite nonconformist, like not wearing a bra.

Cristen: Yeah. I mean, I can - especially the - the first few times you - you did that, were you nervous at all? Like, how were you feeling, or were you just like, this is me and deal with it?

Chidera: I didn't think much of it because I saw I saw the no-bra-wearing almost like - it was like an ode to the 90s. Like do you remember those old pictures of Jennifer Aniston in the 90s when she was filming the first few runs of Friends.

Cristen: Yes!

Chidera: And she's not wearing a bra. And it's like those sort of images were what I was looking at. I kind of curated my social feed in such a way that I was seeing loads of images of women who weren't wearing a bra with their outfit. So for me, it was like, I'm not the first ever person to do this. So it's not like I'm doing something that's oh, so shock, horror. But the feeling of choosing to not wear a bra was fun because it felt like a fashion statement for me. And also it was like it almost made me feel like a little bit. It made me feel a little bit more sexy, almost felt like the equivalent of wearing a push-up bra, ironically. It's like not wearing a bra and having your nipples kind of showing through your outfit a little bit. In a way, for me, it creates the same impact my boobs would create if I were to put on a push-up bra with like loads of cleavage is still the same concept of there's something on my chest that I know you want to look at it.

Caroline: When we come back, Chidera gets something off her chest and levels up her bralessness inspo from RiRi … to SaggyBoobsMatter.

Cristen: But first, we unpack why we even wear bras in the first place!

Caroline: Don’t nip off!

[Midroll ad 1]

Caroline: OK Cristen, in terms of why we started wearing bras to begin with, it's basically because they were the next step in lingerie innovation after the corset.

Cristen: Hear that Silicon Valley? long story short, the invention of bras in the late 19th century was really more about function than fashion.

Caroline: Yeah, Women were fed up with corsets that supported breasts from below — lifting them up via shoulder straps and waist bands offered ladies a lot more mobility.

Cristen: But it wasn’t until the 1930s when everyday bra-wearing really became a thing. Because by then, you’ve got the rise of mass-produced clothing, which made bras more affordable. Plus, women’s fashion designers had gone all in on creating new looks and silhouettes tailored for the smoother, shapelier brassiere aesthetic.

Caroline: Yeah, so by 1940, Vogue was telling readers: “You can’t bluff much about your figure under the merciless clothes of today, but something very definite can be done in the way of local assistance by the new inexpensive girdles and brassieres.”

Cristen: And even World War fuckin’ 2 couldn’t slow down the bra market. Get this: Maidenform founder Ida Rosenthaal convinced the US government that bra manufacturing must go on as part of the war effort because Rosie Riveters needed breast support on the job.

Caroline: We need YOU to wear a bra! Sounds like a bunch of propaganda.

Cristen: Well get this, Caroline. Moving ahead in our timeline, the 1960s is when bralessness becomes a countercultural fashion statement. Back then, older women were still wearing pantyhose and girdles AND bras, but their rebellious daughters didn’t want to be so tied down. Like, would YOU want to walk around everyday in an even less breathable version of Spanx and a heavy-duty underwire bra??

Caroline: Oh hell no! And Cristen, this brings us up to how the whole bra-burning feminist myth started.

Cristen: Yes!! So in the summer of 1968, a group of feminists staged a protest outside the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. They all brought along symbols of female domestic oppression — stuff like mops, aprons, and of course, bras — and threw it all into what they called a “Freedom Trash Can”

Caroline: But no bras were burned! The feminists had tried to get a permit to light the trash can on fire, but that was a no-go with the city. Nonetheless, sensationalized media coverage introduced the idea — which cemented the myth — that the feminists were bra-burners.

Cristen: What that stereotype also doesn’t take into account is how bralessness was also becoming a straight-up fashion trend. In 1970, The New York Times declared “Braless Look: 2 Years Ago a Daring Fad, but Now It’s a Trend.” And what’s FASCINATING Caroline, is how as soon as women started thinking of bras as optional instead of mandatory, the warnings about bralessness causing boob sag suddenly got louder…

Caroline: Sounds like more propaganda!

Cristen: And propaganda laced with white colonialism. That NYT trend piece quoted a Maidenform spokesperson who insisted that bralessness would cause boob sag because just look at “women over 30 who live in primitive societies.”

Caroline: Fuuuck.

Cristen: Right?

Caroline: But Cristen, the boob-sag scaremongering really got stuck in our heads! Because — hopping forward into the 21st century with our guest, Chidera — here’s what happened when she decided to ditch her bras at 19 ...

Chidera: When I first stopped wearing a bra, my mom was like, don't do that, your boobs are gonna sag. But ironically, what I've read according to the Internets, is that if you don't wear a bra, your boobs are actually more likely to develop perkiness because the muscle is constantly in use. So I mean, I don't really have a point of reference to be able to say if my boobs have become perkier from not wearing a bra. It doesn't really matter to me because my boobs have grown since I was 19 anyway, so they're probably going to be, just they're big. So they're going to be saggy either way.

Cristen: But the thing is, even if you embrace the sag … other people are STILL going to have their own opinions about your body

Chidera: It's just fascinating to me how boobs are such a - such a thing that you can't catch a break because it's like you spend your life childfree and people are moaning about your boobs, and if you have a kid, people are gonna moan about boobs again if you bring them out to feed you kids. It's like you just like, what should I do with my boobs? You want to cut them off for you? Like what? What? What can I do to to finally appease your insatiable need to control my body?

Cristen: Caroline, do you hear that passion in Chidera’s voice? She has had enough!

Caroline: Well, that’s the kind of boobspiration it takes to stand up for saggy boobs! And that might sound absurd, like, what do saggy boobs have to do with ANYthing? But in our breast-obsessed, sexist culture, saggy boobs are seen as unsexy sight gags, and that’s fucked up! So after few years of Chidera going braless, she decided to tell the world that saggy boobs matter.

Cristen: Chidera was in her early 20s at the time and had decided to throw a party to celebrate women who had just gotten out of shitty relationships (which, by the way, wish I’d been invited). And for the occasion, she wore a deep plunge mini dress and, of course, no bra.

Chidera: There was drinks, there was music, everyone looked cute. And then I took loads of pictures. And in those pictures, I looked good. I looked happy. I was so happy with the pictures. So as I was posting, as I was about to upload the picture to Instagram, I was kind of like, I just know someone's going gonna say something horrible about my boobs because as much as I can choose to walk out in the world without a bra, I'm not really going to have strangers run up me and be like, “Ew, saggy.” But on the Internet, you will have strangers do that. And so for me, it was like, well, seeing as people are going to makes a comment about my boobs anyway, why don't I use this post to kind of like kind of educate people on why it's important for us to see boobs in a saggy posture. Like, I'm not going to bring the boob out and shove it in your face, but it's more like it should be OK and it should be normal for us to see boobs that aren't sitting up to our collarbones.

Caroline: So, Chidera decided to post the picture of herself at the party with the caption that popped into her head in the moment: #saggyboobsmatter.

Cristen: That post got a TON of attention. Chidera had posted the hashtag to make a point, sure - but she had not anticipated how strong the reaction would be.

Caroline: Yeah Cristen, if you hop on Instagram and scroll through the saggyboobsmatter hashtag, you’ll see a truly beautiful rainbow of boobs n bods. There are big boobs, lumpy boobs, little boobs, saggy boobs. Boobs just feelin themselves in lingerie and bathing suits, T-shirts and tank tops — you name it.

Cristen: But that joy didn’t stop some folks from acting like boobs in the comments.

Chidera: It was mainly a lot of cis men just being like, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” Obviously in reference to my boobs or like, “Oh, Moses parting the Red Sea here. Look at that space between her boobs.”

Caroline: What is it, do you think, that is just like so taboo and unladylike about being visibly braless in public?

Chidera: I think it's because of sexual autonomy and the idea that a woman can choose to be perceived in what people would feel is a sexual manner outside of the parameters other people have set for her because normally a woman should only be sexy in the private confines of her husband's eyes. So when you are seen swinging your boobs about under your shirt with your nipples present, that kind of expresses to people that there's a level of fearlessness you have. But I mean, for me. Now that I'm so used to my boobs, I spend such little time thinking about them that I forget that my boobs are always going to be new to somebody else who doesn't know me or who has never seen me before. And so there has to be a point where you kind of tune out of other people's realities and develop a healthy indifference towards how people respond to you.

Cristen: Do you think that it's kind of problematic at all the way that wearing a bra is, is taught to girls as just this inevitable milestone, almost like getting a period like it's I, at least from my own experience. I don't feel like my mom was ever like, OK. Your breasts are developing. You can wear a bra or you could not wear a bra. It was just like, OK, time to start wearing a bra.

Chidera: It is funny that you mention that ‘cause for me, it's like when I mean, I hope to have a kid one day if I have a daughter and she grows boobs and it gets that time where it's, you know, first-bra conversation, like how you phrase that question, I'm going to give her the option of, “Do you want to wear a bra? Do you not want to wear a bra?” But I will encourage her to understand that if you choose not to wear a bra, here's how people might respond to you. It won't always be positive, but we can work on creating some positive reinforcement within so that external factors will not take you down. Well, if you choose to wear a bra, well then we can have fun with talking about boobs and talking about how they're going to change as you grow. When you gain weight, they might get bigger, or they might not change at all, just like I really think it’s important that we are given options rather than just having presets imposed on us.

Caroline: Right. It is funny, though, like we kind of as we were all getting into this quarantine situation, Cristen and I did have someone throw a question at us on Instagram of like, “Do you think that some of these things we're not doing right now” — so like not wearing a bra or not putting on makeup — “like, do you think those things will stick?” And and I really got the feeling that she was asking from a hopeful place. I mean, I do you see that happening?

Chidera: I don't think they will stick but I don't see it as a bad thing. It's like this is this is the longest I've gone, you know, especially on a day-to-day basis without wearing makeup. And I know that's because I'm not seeing other people. I know it's because I'm not going to places and rooms and environments where I need to show up in a particular manner. And this is an interesting one, because the the no-bra-in-quarantine conversation kind of alludes to the larger topic of, who do we really, who are we doing all this for? Who do we wear make up for? Who do we wear bras for? Who do we present ourselves for? And I think we as a society, we as a society, we as a society, I feel like bloody Karl Marx right now. We as a society.

Caroline: We live in a society.

Chidera: We live in a we literally live in a society. Karl Marx made points. But what I'm trying to say is I feel like I just wish we let ourselves just feel a bit more free and know that you don't owe anybody anything and you don't owe any movement anything. You are your own keeper. And it's up to you how you choose to curate and present yourself as long as it's harmless and not offending or hurting anyone.

Cristen: Earlier I asked you about the sort of the negative responses you received to saggy boobs matter. But what were the - what are some of the positive responses that you've gotten? Because I'm sure you hear - you've heard from so many people with boobs.

Chidera: Yes! Oh, my gosh. To this day, I get so many positive responses. It's mainly like - there's about three key groups of people: women who are under 18 and considering surgery, women who have just had a child and women who are like above 40. So the women who are under 18 and contemplating getting a boob job done, I've had some of them message me so kindly saying that coming across #saggyboobsmatter has encouraged them to actually cancel their plastic surgery consultation, which for me is like shocking and - and quite heartwarming. Shocking because I didn't even know you can arrange plastic surgery consultations when you're not even 18 yet, but heartwarming because again, I'm not against plastic surgery, I'm just against any potentially life-changing decision being because of someone else. If you're going to modify your body, you really, really, really have to want to do it for you. And it has to be something that is sustainable for you. And only you can decide that for yourself. Now, if the women who have just had babies who have messaged me about saggyboobsmatter, it's been so emotional to see them say that they almost didn't breastfeed their kids because they had other women tell them that if you breastfeed your kids, you're going to have saggy boobs, but if you don't breastfeed, then you can maintain some perkiness. And so it's great to see that mothers who have messaged me about it have felt confident and empowered in the process of being able to nurture another person using just their body alone without worrying about how their bodies are going to look afterwards. And then the women over 40 who have said they love saggy boobs matter. It's been so cool because they've said that this is their first time in like 20, 30 years going without a bra, and they feel sexy again. It’s like, yes, Brenda. Live your life. Live your life, Brenda.

Caroline: Yes Brenda!

Chidera: Go get your life. Hell yes, Brenda.

Cristen: Hell yes, Brenda, indeed.

Caroline: Up next, we’re gonna finally get to the bottom of the great sag debate — and lovingly fact-check Chidera — with our resident boob-and-bra expert, professor Jenny Burbage

Cristen: Don’t bust away!

[Midroll ad 2]

Cristen: Caroline, one of the wildest things to me about the whole bralessness debate is how we’re still hearing the same old sag-mongering as we did 50 years ago. That 1970 New York Times trend piece I mention earlier also noted that “Some doctors — and some bra companies — believe women can damage their pectoral muscles by not wearing bras.”

Caroline: That kind of claptrap is why we had to seek out some actual science with breast biomechanics professor Jenny Burbage. Jenny’s one of the only people in the world with that job title FYI, and her lab studies how our boobs move and specifically what kind of support sports bras should provide.

Cristen: So, when you started out in 2005, hardly anyone was studying bras … Why do you think that there had been so little research up to that point?

Jenny: I think a number of reasons. I mean, biomechanics as a as a discipline is historically quite male-dominated. So there aren't many comparative sort of female researchers. I think that might be one issue. But also it's just the whole apparel industry had been lagging behind. So there'd been so much research focused on running trainers. And really the bra industry was quite kind of slow to kind of realize actually the sports bra is a product which needs to be researched. And and actually, you know, we don't know much about it and why you know why are we creating it like this in the first place?

Caroline: OK. So how do breasts move when we're walking vs. running or jumping?

Jenny: Um so they move quite differently. In terms of walking, we find there's an equal amount of movement in sort of all sorts of three sort of directions, I guess. So we see breasts moving up and down, so vertically, horizontally, side to side, and then forwards and backwards or in and out. And when you're walking, generally we see an equal split between those those three directions. Whereas as soon as you get into a running scenario, we see about 50 percent of the breast movement occurring vertically and about 25 percent side to side and 25 percent forwards and backwards. And if we do jumping activities, we can see up to sort of 70, 80 percent just in the vertical direction. So the type of activity that you're doing really does have an influence on the amount of breast movement that is happening.

Cristen: Caroline, let’s say the activity is jogging. Here’s a fun fact: All that up-and-down and side-to-side jiggling actually follows a figure-eight pattern.

Caroline: Beautiful! But a not-as-fun-fact is that boob bounce was a longstanding excuse for barring women from long-distance running. Until the mid-80s, marathons were sanctioned only for cisgender men thanks to just these wildly unscientific assumptions that it would make uteruses collapse and breasts atrophy like raisins

Cristen: So is there an actual like health and physical health reason to wear a bra?

Jenny: To be honest, I think it's completely personal choice on that, because, there's no sort of necessary negative health issue by not wearing it. However, we have got some evidence to suggest that women with larger breasts who maybe aren't wearing a well-supported bra, then you know, that can lead to light upper-body pain. So pain in the neck and the back and shoulders. But it's gonna be so different for for different people. If you got an A-cup woman who wants to not wear a bra, you know, it's kind of it's personal choice. It's not going to be necessarily a negative health impact. And yes, we know that you know the breasts are going to sag eventually because as I said, the skin gets more elastic. Sorry, as you get older, that starts in the mid 20s anyway. So, you know, is this about whether or not you want to, you know, try and prevent that. And a lot of the time really, wearing a bra is about creating a nice shape and being able to look a certain way under clothing. But again, it is completely personal choice. And unless you are sort of particularly sort of large in the in the in the bust, and it doesn't cause you any other symptoms then you know, I don't think it's necessarily something that you absolutely shouldn't do. It's just personal preference.

Cristen: So how does gravity affect our breasts to our knowledge and sort of over what period of time does it seem to take for it to really start to, I don't know, pull things down?

Jenny: So I mean, gravity acts on all of us right all of the time. We've got gravity acting on us, which is, you know why everything, all of our skin would eventually be moving southward as we get older. Uh we did a study once where women came, came into the lab and then they removed. So they removed their bra. And we effectively kind of monitored with a motion capture system like the breast, just with them sitting for like half an hour to see whether like what happened when you took the bra off and what happened to the position of the breast. And we found up to 2 centimeters’ drop over that half-hour period. So, I mean, mainly that drop happened in the first six, seven minutes. But yeah, we just don't know what effects over time that has on on the breast if the breast wasn't supported. We just don’t have that. And you know, the difficulty is, like women vary so much in terms of their breast size and breast shape and breast composition. So there are many women who have like, you know, a lot of fatty tissue in the breast, and some hardly have any. So you'll find some women who when they lose weight, they always lose it from their breast first. Some women never lose it from their breast. And it really depends on the ratio between like the glandular tissue, the functional tissue. And then the fatty tissue in the breast, so, then add gravity. And that it's actually gets quite complicated because it just will affect everybody very differently, even if we did have some kind of answer to that.

Cristen: And is that sort of the different fat distribution and muscle distribution, is all of that just determined by our genetics?

Jenny: Yeah. I mean, this is there's no muscle in the breast, but yeah, effectively it's a mainly sort of genetic in terms of yet that ratio between the glandular and the fatty tissue within the breast and the breast shape and size. And then we have to think about these lifestyle factors as well. So women can change up to one cup size every month with the menstrual cycle. So breasts can increase just before menstruation and back down. So some people really get affected by that and maybe change up to a whole cup size. And then you have pregnancy and breastfeeding as well, then you have severe weight loss and weight gain. When you go through the menopause. So all these factors all influence the breast over the years, which is definitely why we always say you need to regularly check your bra fit because, you know, there's so much going on all the time. You know, every time you buy a new bra, it might be that you need to tweak the size a little.

Caroline: Yeah, so the idea that braless boobs are stronger boobs is just as false as the idea that braless boobs are saggy boobs. To the best of our scientific knowledge at this point, what happens to boobs when they’re braless depends on genetics, size, activity, so on.

Cristen: Yeah, so the unsexy and somewhat unsatisfying reality of whether you should or shouldn’t wear bras is that … it depends!

Caroline: Are there any breast- or bra-related myths that you would like to bust here and now?

Jenny: That's a great question. I think one of the key things is that no one is just one bra size. So we get very hung up as women, I feel in saying, right. You know, I'm a I'm 34 C or cup, and that's it. And we hold on to that size, and then we we kind of go shopping based on that. And then effectively all bra manufacturers and even within the same company, the same brand within different ranges, they size the bras definitely. Even a different color can lead to in the same style can lead to a different fit. So we always try to say, look you know you're not one size. This kind of idea of bra size doesn't even really exist. You just need to know what a good fit is and be able to apply that to all the different shopping that you do to make sure that you can find a bra that is well-fitting and supportive. So, yes, that's definitely a myth. Yes. Go in. Yeah. You're gonna be multiple sizes, which doesn't make shopping very easy, but you shouldn't get hung up on it.

Caroline: Yeah, I feel like bra fitting is traumatic enough in the store. I just feel a lot better knowing that I am not imagining things.

Jenny: You're certainly not.

Cristen: I did want to go back and just quickly, ask - you mentioned that even a different color in a bra could, you know, affect the sizing? Why is that?

Jenny: It's - so if you buy a two pack of bras, where one’s white, one’s black, which is quite common. The dye used for the black bra can lead up the black bra to come up smaller. So I would say if you're going to buy multi packs like try on both to cover speakers is no guarantee that one will fit one won't. So yeah. Definitely worth consideration.

Cristen: My mind is blown over here.

Cristen: Well Caroline, today I learned that bra sizes are gaslighting us, and I can only assume that they’re in cahoots with Big Denim

Caroline: Don’t forget Big Dressing-Room Lighting. It’s like a trifecta of body-image evil.

Cristen: Well listeners, if your nips are tired of getting chafed by the patriarchy, Chidera has some practical parting advice for starting your own braless adventure.

Chidera: I would say if you want to go braless and you’re someone who's used to wearing like a thicker bra, like a T-shirt bra or a padded push-up bra. Why don't you try sort of like transitioning? So get yourself maybe a non-underwired bra that has no padding almost like a bralette and just wear that underneath your clothes. See how it feels when your boobs are jiggling more often than usual. If you don't like the bralette because it's still too fiddly. Maybe it's because you need to just not wear a bra at all. And then when you decide to not wear a bra, maybe it could be that you do it in an environment where it's not like first day of your new job. But if you do want to practice not wearing a bra, why don’t you choose not wearing a bra when you're going on a night out? See how that feels like. Get used to that feeling and you'll be surprised you actually still get the same amount of compliments you would have gotten if you wore the push-up bra anyway, because you're gorgeous regardless of your boobs. And most people most people don't even notice your boobs before they notice you because fun fact: You're not just your boobs. Who would have thunked? Who?

Cristen: I want to as soon as we're done with this recording, I want to go outside and I want to run a victory lap around my apartment. Without my bra on! Chidera, thank you so much.

Chidera: This was so fun! Thanks for having me. I've had so much fun.

Caroline: OK unladies …have you ditched your bras? What do you think about going braless? Let us know! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: Don’t forget to pick up Chidera’s books, What a Time to Be Alone and How to Get Over a Boy. You can follow her on social at theslumflower. Visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources, transcripts, and our weekly Unladylike newsletter. You can also stop by our shop while you’re there to grab a cute coozie for you

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: Next week…

Sesali: It was, like, really cool and performative to be a feminist, so long as you didn't have to, like, interrogate any of your own, like, privileges, or actions within that. And I think that is how Refinery29 operated as a company.

Cristen: We’re talking about the racial reckoning happening among feminist media companies, specifically Refinery29. We’re talking to two former employees — Sesali Bowen and Ashley Alese Edwards — who took to Twitter to call bullshit on the racism and toxicity they experienced working at Refinery29. Plus, CNN media reporter Kerry Flynn will walk us through her investigative reporting on the company — and the bigger picture of why so many “inclusive, feminist” companies aren’t so woke behind the scenes. You won’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.