To bra or not to bra, during the pandemic months and beyond

Accelerated by the pandemic, innerwear silhouettes have evolved with comfort at their core. The first Covid-19 casualty was the rib-squishing push-up power bra, and from its ashes was born the bralette.

Bookworm Banker (that’s not her real name but she is a banker who reads well and wisely) can talk of brassieres (henceforth, bra) all day. Of her hatred for underwires. Her indifference towards lace and diaphanous lingerie. Her antipathy for sexy bra colours. She has a set rule: dark coloured bra under dark coloured clothing and light coloured for light coloured clothing. But all of it is anyway redundant because, since the pandemic, she has been braless, occasionally switching to sag-support with lounge bras.

Bookworm Banker raises a brow over the loud requiems to the death of the bra. She harks back to the 1968 iconic moment when a group of women hurled mops, lipsticks, high heels and bras into a ‘Freedom Trash Can’. Bookworm Banker has no Freedom Trash Can in her Kuala Lumpur home but she swears by “home is where you can take off the bra.” For almost two years, she has been braless, reluctantly hooking one when she has to go for official meetings. Being a banker comes with its own sartorial formalities. Being big breasted with its own drawbacks.

While Bookworm Banker still hangs on to the bra occasionally, Aparna Pande, public regions professional, and certified nutritionist and physical trainer, hurtled towards full no-bra look during the pandemic. Underwires are out, nipple pasties are in. Instead of buying comfort bras, she is choosing clothing that does not essentially call for a bra. In the gym she wears the sports bra for heavy lifting, at home, the bra is forgotten.

“If men can wear boxers in public, why cannot women be braless,” Aparna questions the beauty/sexy standards set by patriarchy. “The pandemic pushed me towards a no-bra choice that I always yearned for. I am not completely forever-braless yet, but in the past two years I have been walking towards that magical no-bra existeance. For me, comfort is primary, the reign of the bra irrelevant,” Aparna adds. As a physical trainer she has been propounding the notion of comfort over prettiness, as a woman she is telling other women that it is “okay to sleep braless” and to “skip the bra during winter.” Nipples never blaze from under a thick sweater. Do they?

A friend (she does not want to be named) still laughs about the day she forgot to wear a bra to the grocery store (she wasn’t making a braless statement, she forgot because she had been braless for months). “I got a lot of stares but I did not care. I do not care about the stares of strangers any more. The pandemic will compel people to learn to live with some nip sightings,” she said. Twenty months into the pandemic she is still braless and calls it that one rare virus-induced joy.

Aparna and Bookworm Banker are not the only ones questioning the absolute need of  a bra. Why hook an uncomfortable underwire if you’re slipping into an oversized sweatshirt? Why opt for a backless bra if you’re sporting a covered-back dress? There are a million women challenging the necessity of a bra. Just peek into French stats of women who never or almost-never wore a bra in 2020: 60% in the 18-24 age group, 6% in 25-65 age group while 8% of those above 65% mothballed the bra during the pandemic.

Worldwide, the innerwear-business is gargantuan - the lingerie market is expected to hit $250 billion by 2022. But accelerated by the pandemic, innerwear silhouettes have evolved with comfort at their core. The first Covid-19 casualty was the rib squishing push-up power bra and from its ashes was born the bralette. Lingerie that straddles the comfort and functionality became the new darling of pandemic dressing. According to edited.com, in the last three months of 2020, across the US and UK combined, bralettes and sports bras eclipsed push-ups by 382% and 162%, respectively.

Not everyone is throwing the bra in the Freedom Trash Can, others are designing clothing to meet the newfound braless love. Headquartered in California, Frankly Apparel became the pandemic heartthrob. The first of its kind braless clothing company, it is changing things for bigger-cup sized women (women with smaller breasts have smaller bra-worries).  Girlfriend Collective designed a range of sports bras made of stretch fabric from recycled plastic bottles and eco-friendly dyes while Parade launched its Universal collection - the world’s first carbon neutral underwear that uses sustainable recycled yarns that saves up to  8.5% of energy, 84% of water waste and 77% of gas generation.

The other big winner during the pandemic has been Bali’s Comfort Revolution Bra that is completely wire-free, has wide straps and foam cups and provides the famed underwire bra support without poking a wire into the ribcage. Women who own the Comfort Revolution call it a ‘life-changing design’. You are wearing a bra but you feel you aren’t. That surely is a comfort revolution.

A section of the women I spoke with still swear by the balconette bra and confessed that a good bra is essential for feeling/looking good; others while vehemently dissing the bra also whispered concerns about whether going braless for months would mean a trip to the Sag Harbour? Will my breast sag? Is it good to exercise braless? Sag questions that only nag the big breasted. Bookworm Banker took to lounge bras because she is not yet ready for the Sag Harbour. Another woman who prefers anonymity said “sagging is an ageing process, being braless is not the sag perpetrator”. The wise ones will tell you that wearing a bra doesn’t prevent breasts from sagging and not wearing one doesn’t cause breasts to sag. During the pandemic, the sag questions raised its head but most women stuck to being braless.

Is the bra dead? Aparna is sure that even if the pandemic ends and the world returns to ‘normal’ life, the bra will not come back. Not for her. For Bookworm Banker, lounge bras are a pandemic-induced love. An occasional love. Not a 24-hour love. For the friend who forgot to wear the bra to the grocery store, bras are evil, the lesser of it the better.

Dolly Parton had once said: “I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out”. In the pandemic, many women burnt their bras. Their bras will not rise out of the ashes like a phoenix.

History’s Best No-Bra Moments

- In 1958, Jayne Mansfield wore such a low-cut dress that Sophia Loren confessed “I’m staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate”

- Debbie Harry wearing vintage tees sans bras both on and off stage.

- Madonna taking off her jacket to reveal her harness bra (why call it a bra, it is just a few lengths of ribbon!) at the 1992 fashion benefit party by Jean-Paul Gaultier

- Anthony Vaccarello’s breast-baring little black dress paired with a glittering paste for his 2017 Spring/Summer collection for Saint Laurent.

- Someone once said that nipple as a fashion accessory was the most influential fashion contribution of Friends that even sparked the fake nipple trend in 2017.

- Jennifer Lopez’s 2000s Grammys look an emerald chiffon Versace gown with a hip-length V held together by safety pins. It is often called the first viral dress in history.

- At 18, Kendall Jenner made her catwalk debut in a bra-free ensemble. Since then, Jenner has been a staunch #freethenipple advocate.