Why I’m Ditching My Bras

My girls prefer to roam free — and it feels so good

I got my first bra when I was 11. I was nervous, excited, and embarrassed every time I put that thing on. I couldn’t wait to go from my little bumps to real, fully realized breasts.

Little did I know that a year later, I’d be packing C cups and a few years after that, DD.

With breasts came a whole lot of other stuff. People were starting to talk to me about how I should present my body (“Button up your shirt, your boobs are showing!”). Men were openly gawking at me. Male classmates were grabbing me, snapping my bra, and making lewd comments.

Suddenly, my bras became a symbolic part of my wardrobe, like some kind of metaphorical breastplate. The more “locked-in” the girls were, the safer I felt. I started buying ill-fitting bras — bigger cups and tighter bands — to keep my breasts as flat and covered as possible.

I soon ventured into underwire, which I found immobilized my breasts so they would not draw further attention with any unwanted movement, and later, I even bought padded bras to hide my often-erect nipples.

The more “locked in” the girls were, the safer I felt.

With all this binding, I found that one of the greatest and simplest pleasures of my life was to whip off my bra at the end of the day and let the girls roam free. God, what a beautiful feeling it is to unhook my bra, slide it off and feel the weight of my breasts. It is absolute heaven.

After high school, I started looking for opportunities to eschew bra-wearing. In the winter, I’d sometimes wear a really big cowl and hope no one looked too closely to see the girls hanging loose underneath.

After I moved in with my first boyfriend, I often went braless, despite my insecurity about my breasts not meeting our cultural beauty standards. (You can’t not have saggy boobs when you are a DD.) However, I quickly learned that men don’t really give a shit if your boobs are saggy, especially when said boobs are freely swinging under your t-shirt. I’m entirely confident that all of my past partners would have gladly chosen my saggy, un-bound breasts over a gravity-defying push-up bra any day of the week.

When I needed some support, I’d tie my shirts or tank tops up just beneath the bust line so my breasts could still be free with just a hint of a buttress, so to speak. My boyfriend used to say I was the MacGyver of breasts — I could make a bra out of anything.

I still felt pressure to wear bras in public, though. I already felt so self-conscious when I walked fast or ran — I could feel my breasts jiggling even in a bra, and I knew people might take notice. It felt obscene.

In the back of my mind, I wondered: Why? Why should I feel obscene that the flesh on my body moves when I move? But it would be a long time before I could start to answer that.

In my thirties, I heard an actress say that she wore a bra 24/7 because it was the only way to assure that breasts don’t sag with age. I’d been sagging since I was 16, so I had a momentary panic over this comment and started wearing my underwire bras to bed.

I still couldn’t help but try to escape them from time to time, and often yanked off my bra when I was doing chores. My partner at the time went crazy every time he found me braless, showing his appreciation by kissing me and not-so-subtly copping a feel under my shirt. He said he loved it when I let my breasts go “free range.” You know. Like a pair of happy chickens in a field.

Interestingly, I found that during the years I wore bras almost all the time, I developed intense breast pain in the days before my period. They became swollen and achy to the point of serious discomfort. It hurt to touch them with too much pressure.

While I realize this could have been triggered by the hormonal changes in a woman’s body as she ages, I also wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I was wearing bras night and day, rarely letting my breasts move freely.

I found that during the years I wore bras almost all the time, I developed intense breast pain in the days before my period.

When I finally ditched this practice and stopped wearing bras to bed, the monthly breast pain and swelling lessened in intensity and soon after ceased altogether. Coincidence? I’m not so sure…

By the time I hit my 40s, I was single and working in a job that was becoming more stressful than it was fulfilling. Between heartache and over-working, I started developing mysterious illnesses, pains, and other ailments. Some of my mystery symptoms were manifesting in my breasts.

Over the course of two years of scans, ultrasounds, mammograms, and other medical screenings, my perplexed doctors (yes, plural) suggested a wait-and-see strategy. No one could figure out what was wrong with me.

They suggested I make adjustments in my lifestyle and wardrobe choices in order to help me manage my pain and other symptoms.

I bought myself a few cotton bras after that, looking for a fabric that would breathe and feel better than something synthetic. But ultimately, with the pain I was in, I found I needed to just stop wearing bras as much as possible.

This was a challenge with work. I went back to my old routine of wearing cowls and ponchos and scarves to hide my jiggly flesh and blazing nipples. In the summer, I’d wear a bralette (which is basically useless to anyone over a B cup) and occasionally found male coworkers freezing in mid-sentence when they looked up from their desks and saw so much unguarded bosom staring them in the face.

But I didn’t care so much anymore. Yes, I was still worried I’d be perceived as being obscene, but I was in pain and needed to do whatever it took to get myself through the day — and hopefully, back to health.

I found that I loved going braless. In my younger years, bound by feelings of shame and trapped by my distorted perception of my body, my breasts often felt overwhelmingly heavy.

But in my 40s, I found comfort in that weight. I started to love the feeling of heaviness, the feeling of my clothes against my skin, the rhythmic sway of my breasts when I walked. I have kept them so bound my whole life, it feels good to let them move with the rest of my body. I even like to shimmy my shoulders back and forth, letting them get a good swing across my body. My god, it feels so freeing.

There are many herbalists and natural healers who believe that breasts are one of a woman’s primary portals through which we perceive the world. This idea resonates strongly with me. The less I wear my bra, the more open, intuitive, and perceptive I feel. I feel more at one with my environment and more settled and secure within my own body.

I’ve already known this to be true in my relationships. Over the years, I’ve been turning into that kind of woman who flattens her breasts against the unwitting victims of her embrace, as if saying, “I can tell you need some love — take some from me today.” When I hold my sister’s babies and they slap their little hands against my breasts, I can feel the love pouring out of my chest and into their bodies. During sex, I cannot relax or fully connect until I feel a lover’s hands and lips on my breasts. These are the ways that I relate to the world around me — so much of it through the perception and sensory experience of my breasts.

But what I love most of all is being able to experience my body in the way that I want. Being able to feel that openness in my chest, the lack of restraint. Being able to let my body breathe and be free.

My challenge now is allowing me to eschew a bra in public. I am starting to unpack the shame I feel about my breasts and I’m continuing to examine and challenge our culture’s over-sexualization of the female body.

I’m starting small, wearing shirts that are on the sheer side with my thin, cotton bras, letting my nipples blaze away. A few years ago, I never would have considered doing that — but why shouldn’t I? Why should I participate in the belief that my nipples are shameful and that they should be hidden away?

But I admit, I’m not sure I will make it all the way to braless-in-public. I’ve got some hefty girls here. When I bend over or turn suddenly, there’s some serious sway going on under my shirt. There is no way I won’t get stares, glares, and comments suggesting I “put the ladies away.”

I also don’t want to be perceived as someone who is open to being propositioned by strangers, and unbelievably, certain sartorial choices made by women are still interpreted as sexual invitations.

And yet every single one of these reasons just makes me want to do it all the more.

In the meantime, I will continue to let the girls go “free range” at home as much as they want. Despite the fact that my health problems have not fully cleared (almost!), I feel deep healing on a broader level through this act of letting myself experience my breasts, rather than pinning them down.

Why should I participate in the belief that my nipples are shameful and that they should be hidden away?

I feel much more aware of the world around me, much more sensitive. I feel like my lymph fluid is moving more freely (though medical professionals claim bras do not impede this process, my body tells me otherwise). And believe it or not, I feel like my breasts have become firmer and even, dare I say, a tad more defiant of gravity the more I let them bounce.

I suddenly want to whip off this binding and let my body be liberated — hard nipples and all. Even now, as I write this, I can feel the weight of my breasts against my ribs and good golly, they are so damn happy to be free.

© Yael Wolfe 2019