The Braless Years: How the Pandemic Modified How We Put on Underwear for Good

“Am I exhibiting off my boobs? Or do I simply have boobs…and exist?” asks TikTok creator Rachel Levin in a viral video from November 2021. Despite the fact that the clip is sort of two years outdated, the audio has continued to resonate among the many platform’s customers—almost 11,000 posts utilizing the sound chunk exist, lots of which characteristic ladies in tops of various necklines, pondering the very same query.

Questioning how we view breasts—and precisely how seen they are often to stay “acceptable”—is nothing new. The “Free the Nipple” marketing campaign started in 2012, and a movie of the identical title was launched in 2014. The picture of the “bra-burning feminist” is synonymous with the Girls’s Liberation Motion of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, though the precise burning of bras has since been confirmed to be a delusion. However maybe essentially the most vital occasion concerning how society views sporting bras in current historical past has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting in March 2020, when workplaces shut down worldwide and distant work protocols have been put into place, working in sweatpants, and sometimes, braless, from one’s lounge (or mattress) turned the brand new regular for a lot of. Within the years for the reason that pandemic started, a shift away from conventional bras is tangible: distant work remains to be widespread, style developments like backless tops and sheer attire are gracing crimson carpets, the physique positivity motion is constant to evolve, and bodily autonomy, within the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, is on the forefront of our minds.

Julia Fox in L.A. on Might 11, 2023.

For some, the onset of the pandemic was, actually, the catalyst for saying goodbye to bras, and the apply has caught. “I’m a 42H and I haven’t worn a bra since June 2020,” reveals Agnes Bebon, a advertising and marketing supervisor based mostly in Montreal, who added that she overhauled her wardrobe when she made the choice to go braless as a result of she “was lastly dressing for myself and never hiding my physique.” (Although she additionally notes that she does put on sports activities bra-like tops now, following back-to-office mandates.) “Bras have been at all times uncomfortable, by no means match proper, and left marks on me. I ended sporting them across the identical time that I began making actual efforts to love my physique, and a part of that was me accepting that, yeah, my boobs are huge and so they sag a bit, however that’s positive and I’m sizzling.”

For Suze Heller, a author and baker based mostly in Asheville, North Carolina, letting go of bras throughout the early days of lockdown was for greater than consolation. “A part of it was determining what was gender-affirming as my physique modified in the previous few years,” they mentioned, noting that they went from sporting bralettes earlier than the pandemic started to “no bra for some time after which binders and now sports activities bras.” The singularity of what’s thought of workplace acceptable has modified now that hybrid work is widespread, in that a number of individuals I interviewed talked about sporting bralette-type undergarments to the workplace—one thing they by no means would have thought to do earlier than COVID-19.

The explanations for reevaluating one’s relationship with bras are plentiful, however a standard thread seems to be a journey towards physique neutrality. Victoria Paris, an influencer based mostly in Los Angeles, additionally mentioned she began sporting bras much less ceaselessly in 2020. “I feel I simply stopped caring as a lot about the way in which I regarded as a result of…I wasn’t going into an workplace, I wasn’t going to high school. I wasn’t apprehensive about how individuals noticed me,” she says of her early COVID uniform, which consisted of outsized shirts and tank tops with no bra. Paris, who is thought largely for her style, journey, and residential adorning content material and has had partnerships with manufacturers like City Outfitters and Anthropologie, ceaselessly posts images of her outfits, lots of them braless.

And as assured as she might seem, the creator additionally admits that it wasn’t simple to begin. As a teen and into her early twenties, “I used to be extraordinarily insecure about not sporting a bra and the way in which that regarded…even my breast form,” Paris says. Nonetheless, since she began going braless extra ceaselessly over the previous three years, she’s felt empowered to begin embracing the way in which her breasts look naturally. “For the longest time, I used to be so caught up over, ‘I don’t need saggy boobs,’ despite the fact that there’s nothing flawed with having saggy boobs. It’s pure, it’s stunning, it’s womanly.” And when she posts a photograph wherein her nipples present or it’s clear she’s not sporting a bra? “Actually, I really feel like [my followers] by no means see me in a bra, in order that they wouldn’t even clock it. That’s simply how they see me.”

Unsurprisingly, the style world is catching on. Stacey Chia, a New York Metropolis-based communications supervisor on the style label Tanya Taylor says she’s seen developments like “thicker materials on tops, backless attire, [and] deep V-necklines that actually imply you may’t put on a bra, and should you needed some kind of protection, you’d have to make use of nipple covers,” over the previous few years that signify a cultural shift away from bras. So far as her personal preferences go, she says she typically opted for bralettes earlier than the pandemic, however as soon as it started, “I even discovered myself even ditching the bralettes, since I had a uniform of unfastened button-downs” all through COVID, including, “I feel the pandemic opened us as much as a brand new degree of consolation with our our bodies and different points of our lives as nicely.”

A classic brasserie advert.

Aja Barber, a London-based stylist and creator of Consumed: The Want for Collective Change: Colonialism, Local weather Change, and Consumerism, then again, let go of bras years earlier than the pandemic started, though lockdown did solidify her shift away from them for the long run. By her late twenties, actually, Barber had grow to be fed up with uncomfortable clothes, together with tight-fitting trousers, heeled sneakers, and, in fact, bras. “I’ve by no means been a brilliant eager bra wearer,” she says. “I’ve by no means been that enthusiastic about it. I’ve at all times thought that bra purchasing was burdensome and annoying and cash that I actually didn’t need to spend in that path.”

As a approach to nonetheless really feel trendy and put-together, “I’d purchase summer season attire that usually have some kind of tightness within the chest space to push issues collectively and maintain [my breasts] up. That’s the way you get away with not sporting a bra,” she says of how her behavior of going braless started. “However I totally anticipate that in my later years I’ll grow to be that braless outdated lady, and I don’t care in any respect.”

Since Barber primarily works from house, her bralessness doesn’t pose any points to her degree of professionalism. Although she raises the purpose that there’s an incredible diploma of privilege with regards to who can go braless in skilled or formal settings and nonetheless be taken severely, reflecting on a former co-worker who was an “older white lady who would put on sweatpants and an outdated sweater and by no means a bra.” Barber notes, “I do suppose that there’s a little bit of white privilege wrapped up within the skill to return to work trying that approach. As a Black individual, I don’t suppose I’ve that privilege ever.”

Equally, there’s an excessive amount of privilege with regards to measurement, provided that fatphobia stays current each within the office and the style business. “I feel it’s extra acceptable for smaller breasted individuals to go braless, however I really feel like if I [a D/DD] went braless, it will be very frowned upon,” says Megan Watson, a Chicago-based environmental guide. “And particularly for fats and plus measurement individuals—I really feel prefer it provides to the anti-fat rhetoric if we don’t put on bras, i.e., we don’t care about our appearances, we don’t put within the effort, and many others…,” she provides.

Conversely, the early days of quarantine have pushed some to find a brand new appreciation for the pulled-together feeling that sporting a bra can present. “At first of quarantine, I relished within the skill to put on leggings and a sweater and name it a day,” says Caldwell Harden, a consumer companies supervisor based mostly in New York Metropolis. “However as quarantine lagged on, I simply grew bored with not making an effort with my outfits and I began actually desirous about how I obtained dressed each day. Quickly, I began seeing a correlation within the effort I put into my outfit and my outlook in direction of the day.” Ultimately, Harden returned to sporting a bra every day.

“I discover once I don’t put on a bra, I often am placing much less effort into my look typically, and I simply really feel much less ready to tackle the day,” Harden says. “My garments and elegance are a sort of armor for me to face the world, and my bras and undergarments are the chainmail.”

Rihanna attends Jean Paul Gaultier’s fall/winter 2014/2015 present throughout Paris Trend Week.

Carrying (or not sporting) a bra is a private selection, in fact, although it’s additionally price contemplating what its basic function is. “Bras might be useful for ladies who’ve breast ache, which is quite common, as a result of, if correctly fitted, the bra can present help to the breast and can assist cut back discomfort,” says Dr. Deanna J. Attai, MD, FACS, an affiliate scientific professor within the Division of Surgical procedure at UCLA’s David Geffen College of Drugs and the UCLA Well being Burbank Breast Care. She additionally talked about {that a} supportive bra is often advisable for “at the very least throughout the instant postoperative interval” for individuals who have undergone surgical procedure. In any other case, Dr. Attai says, “There aren’t any good medical causes for or towards sporting a bra.”

If there aren’t any critical well being dangers to going braless, and if not sporting a bra is now thought of acceptable, and even trendy in lots of circumstances given the cultural shift of the previous three years, it is likely to be time to rethink what we consider is palatable with regards to breasts, what feels comfy, horny, and gender-affirming, and, most significantly, who actually will get to determine what we do with our breasts.