Women give up the bra | The Press
(Montreal) "What's the use of a bra? This is the question that Lissa Godin, Montreal sexologist, asked herself during the confinement against COVID-19.
Posted 20 Jul. 2021 Clara Descurninges The Canadian Press“Technically, she is supposed to support you instead of restricting you”, but “there is no one who can feel good in a cage all day long”, a- she remarks in interview. "When you take your bra off at the end of the day and you realize you're breathing, that's not normal. »
While everyone was coping as best they could with the vagaries of working from home, Mme Godin first decided to adopt “wireless” bras, only to abandon them altogether. “As I work by videoconference, it doesn’t really matter what I wear,” she said to herself.
She is not the only one to have taken advantage of the confinement to question the standards of female clothing. “I also heard it from my clients,” she said, and “three-quarters of the women around me told me about their bras.”
Émilie Guimond-Bélanger, a 32-year-old personal development coach, had the same thought. Putting on a bra is “a habit that got lost” during confinement, just like wearing high heels or lipstick.
"These are things that I really wore to look like it," she explained in a phone interview, but "after spending 18 months in my slippers, I'm not as concerned about what I'm wearing anymore. the air ". It's not that she doesn't care about her appearance at all anymore, she clarified, "but it's more important to me that it feels natural and that I'm comfortable, rather than belonging to a certain standard.
The bra, "I realize that I didn't necessarily wear it for myself, but I wore it for a certain modesty in society, as if it were something you shouldn't show, to have a nipple sticking out a little bit more,” she said.
Hide those nipples I can't see
“It’s anchored in what I learned, that you had to hide the nipples, added Mme Godin. My generation, if you didn't wear a bra, you were told. »
Women's breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic, just like the Adam's apple or the beard. However, on the social network Facebook, images of female nipples can only be shared under certain conditions, either in the context of "acts of protest", "breastfeeding", "mastectomy scars" or " works of art ". Male torsos are not subject to such restrictions.
If there is such great discomfort around the female breast, "it's because women's nipples are sexualized", according to Mme Godin, while " we see them all day long, nipples in men”.
A taboo of this kind, "it's hard to deconstruct", she lamented. However, according to her, things are changing, whereas now, in the street, she sees "a lot of women who don't give a damn".
However, she made it clear that it is legitimate to adopt bras voluntarily, especially when you “need this support”. According to her, the question is rather: “do you have the right not to wear one? “, because” the choice, sometimes, it is not there “.
More comfortable underwear
In fact, even women who prefer to keep the bra now demand more comfort.
“The demand for bras without hoops has really increased a lot during the pandemic”, underlined the vice-president of design and product development at La Vie en rose, John Izzo, in a telephone interview. “Sports bras”, “stretch fabrics” and “more natural materials” were also in high demand.
“It forced us to rethink our product offering a bit,” he added, even though bralettes were already gaining popularity before March 2020.
At plus-size apparel retailer Penningtons, underwire isn't going away anytime soon, as "our customers are looking for support too," said vice president of merchandising, design and technology Rosalba Iannuzzi. She said, however, that new comfort-oriented models, such as the "seamless bralette" have also become popular with customers.
The craze for “no underwire and no padding” bras has also been noticed at Reitmans. "We still saw a change that is very clear in the client's request" during the confinement, said in a telephone interview the president of the company, Jacqueline Tardif.
According to her, “the industry will have to renew itself” to meet the new demands of women, a view shared by Mr. Izzo.
Even if, with the deconfinement, chic clothes are likely to become fashionable again, “it is difficult, once you have known very comfortable, very relaxed clothes, to return to more business-like, more rigid clothes. “, he said. Within La Vie en rose itself, “before the pandemic, all my work colleagues wore high heels and lipstick”, but after returning to the office, “we were in running shoes”.
This article was produced with the financial support of Facebook and The Canadian Press News Grants.
