How's this for an uplifting story? My love-hate relationship with the bra
Well, 83 per cent of women will not leave home without it.
I couldn't wait until I could wear one. Now I can't wait to take it off. For me, home is where the bra isn't.
You've come a long way baby!
Yup, I'm talking brassières, which is a French word meaning "upper arm." Makes me think ... were they calling breasts "arms" back in the day?
While the first bra was made of handkerchiefs and not invented until 1914, our breasts have been bound and supported in some way or another. In Greece, women would wrap bands of fabric across their chests tied or pinned at the back.
The mother of the "brassiere" was 19-year-old socialite Mary Phelps Jacob, nicknamed Polly. While dressing for a debutante's ball in 1910, she slipped a delicate evening gown over her whalebone corset. She looked in the mirror at how clunky it looked with its boning wrinkling the sheer fabric.
Polly called out to her personal maid — like you would if you were rich — for a pair of silk handkerchiefs, a cord, pink ribbon, a needle and thread.
In the spirit of MacGyver, she began to stitch them together. When she was finished, she held up what was to be the foundation of the modern bra.
It didn't lift and separate, it was more like control and flatten. All her friends wanted her to make them one. "Aha," thought Polly, "I'm on to something."
She began work on a copyright.
Mary Phelps Jacob applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and said her brassiere was "so efficient that it may be worn even by persons engaged in violent exercise like tennis."
Job one, noted Polly, "It does not confine the person anywhere except where it is needed." She was granted the patent for her "brassiere" on Nov. 3, 1914.
Polly wanted more than crackers for her invention.
Before the brassiere was a household name, she sold the patent to Warner Brothers Corset Company for $1,500 — an acquisition that earned the company $15 million over the next 30 years.
Polly was never upset that the brassieres went on to make the Warner company a lot of money. Rather, she was proud of her creation and said, "I can't say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it."
I wonder how she'd feel today knowing that bra sales in Canada in 2018 reached $2.03 billion. Worldwide sales are in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
If your cup is only half full ...
I recall my first tangle with a bra. It was a training bra and didn't come with wheels.
What was it training me for? Was it to be uncomfortable for the rest of my life, constantly pulling up my straps, riding up my back and feeling my boobs were being strangled in a straight jacket? When everyone else in gym class wore one, I had to have one too.
I remember my first bathing suit when I supposedly had boobs. It was a little nautical number, navy blue with red and white details. It had these giant mounded foam cups. It was a two-piece with a pleated skirt and well-suited for sailor girls. I loved it, even though the top was sizes too big.
To this day, I can remember walking down the hill to the lake and looking down at the supersized cups on my chest. Ooh-la-la!
I can't say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.- Mary Phelps Jacob
I dove into the lake and the cups which were only tethered by air, came up around my ears. I jumped up and looked like a bedraggled Minnie Mouse coming off the Tilt-A-Whirl. I quickly hauled it down. I was embarrassed then, but it's funny to me now.
When I recall that day, I think of the adage, if your cup is only half full, you have the wrong bra size.
I used to think that my breasts were one of my best assets. Now I think the left one is being spitey and is in a race to see how fast it can reach my knees.
Speaking about reaching somewhere. Have you heard the one about Playtex and NASA? Why cross your heart and aim for the moon if I'm going to tell you about it?
Playtex was the first bra and girdle company to boldly go where no one has gone before.
With the space race heating up in the late 1960s, Playtex sees a new market: spacesuits. I don't think there was an engineer who said, "I think Buzz Aldrin would look great in a cross your heart spacesuit!"
Playtex, famous for their latex girdles and brassieres went into researching how to make a pressurized spacesuit.
Their research put them at the head of the line for the Apollo 11 moon launch. Each suit was hand sewn and custom constructed (bespoke) for the three astronauts about to blast off into space.
The rockets were important, but so were the spacesuits. Neil Armstrong said, "The spacesuits were like mini spacecraft. If those suits failed, that was it. You were done."
To me, a bra by any other name to me is still as uncomfortable as hell.
Imagine the pressure put on the Playtex seamstresses. One day you're sewing elastic into a bra and the next day you're sewing a spacesuit to keep an astronaut alive.
Anne Lee Minner, one of the seamstresses who worked on the suits said in a CBS interview, "I went home on many a night and cried. I was scared. This was a person's life this depended on."
Bras, like women, have come a long way. We want bras that fit and are comfortable and for different sizes, shapes and lifestyles.
There's the stick-on, bandeau, balcony, built-in, full support, halter neck, minimizer, mastectomy, maternity, front closure, nursing, peephole, plunge, sports, sheer, soft cup, trainer, underwire, molded cup, longline, racer back and padded. I must stop listing them all or this will quickly turn into 'a book about bras.'
'All that and a bag of chips'
To me, a bra by any other name to me is still as uncomfortable as hell.
Cross your Heart. Perma-lift. Ladies Choice. Maidenform. Peter Pan. Peekaboo. Stardust. Sounds like the announcer at a race introducing the horses.
Do you remember the Wonderbra back in the early 1990s? They were all that and a bag of chips. Okay it wasn't chips ... it was for their cookies.
A cookie is a small pad that fits in the upper part of your bra. It gives your breasts a little push up. The removable pad is shaped to the curve of your breast, so your chest has a fuller look. Okay, let's call them what they are: falsies!
One day, my friend Catherine and I were having lunch at a funky restaurant on Elgin Street in Ottawa. The waiter came over, we chatted, he brought water.
When he left, out of the corner of my eye, on the floor, I saw something white. I took a closer look and it was one of the cookies out of my bra. You've never seen me move so fast. We laughed at my cookie trying to escape. I carried that cookie home and for the rest of the day I felt a little uneven.
This gives a whole new meaning to my cup spilleth over.
Here's a bit of trivia. Do you know who invented the bra clasp? He also said, "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
Mark Twain.
When I get dressed every morning I think, "What am I going to wear?" My fashion choices depend at least 90 per cent on the answer to this question, "Can I get away without wearing a bra?"
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