Brassiere
a continuation of personal studies on feminism, womanhood, the sacred feminine and spirituality
MAY 07, 2025
If you’re interested in the history of the bra, Vouge has a quick read about its evolution. If you are interested in a synopsis, I’ll give you one here:
There is early evidence of bra-like bands and bandeaus in more ancient cities like Rome and Crete. In India there is early evidence of women mentioning breast bandsand in China ‘from the 14th through 17th centuries, women wore a loose silk bodice tied at the neck and waist.’ During the Middle Ages, there were enough layers and structured standards that there was no need for anything else. However, all changed when the corset was invented in the 1500s. There were variations of this to some extent, but ‘Most historians credit the bra as we know it to a 1910 invention by Mary Phelps Jacob.’ She was a crafty 19-year-old, trying to make ends meet with a look she wanted to present. In the 1930s, cup sizes were introduced. And the 1940s created all the rave on tits for fashion. Our modern era presents similar views, but this is when it all started: all the glory for showing off your boobs and bras.
I am a bit biased, and I should note here, that I am not a fan of bras. So if you’d like an unbiased historical synopsis, just go read the article.
Here’s another quick-read article from History if you don’t like Vogue.
Now that I’ve jogged your memory about the history of bras, let’s discuss the whyfactor: Why do they exist at all?
I’d like to propose an alternative perspective toward the diversion or the appreciation of bras and breasts as the argument between bras/breasts and spirituality is a diverse and complex one.
I stumbled across an article by Rabbi Rami Shapiro on Spirituality & Health who spoke specifically about a photograph taken by a Muslim art student. The photograph taken by fine arts student Sooraya Graham C. 2012 depicted a young Muslim holding up a white bra in front of her black Niqab and Burqa.
This photo was torn down from a public display at Thompson River University in 2012 by a staff member acting upon their own volition because the photograph offended their culture. The university restored the photograph along with any damages and kept it up for the show until April 12, 2012. The artist remained to keep the photograph up for interpretation, but it caught the eyes of many.1 Shapiro went on to question the principles of modesty in religious culture and provoked the idea that this moral comes from men who cannot contain themselves.
It is true that throughout history men have perverted the bodies of women through the show of an ankle or a collarbone, and have made parades out of breasts. Ironically, most of which have accounted for their jurisdiction to covering up the bodies of women to be justified boy God itself. Despite the masculine’s unruly acquiescence to create a temple to stand in and continue this justification, the pedestal they stood and stand on to preach these divisions and the history of deeming women as from the devil just because one could not hold their own, there might be more to their indolence.
It might be true that God has deemed to protect his women by protecting them with clothes and coverings in such any religious or spiritual way, but I do believe that there is an item of respect that needs to be present.
Here is a disturbing article, in my opinion, about the current rise toward showing your assets, as opposed to any political or feminist movement.
To clam one’s own autonomy is one thing, and to find respect for oneself in this world of sex-obsessed and celebrity-minded people is a true strength of courage indeed, but all these women are presenting something else. This is not true autonomy. I do respect the rise towards normalizing bodies, especially woman's bodies, but it seems to me that this culture in America is simply desensitized to it all.
These beauty standards do still convey to young girls and women all over, and it is striking a claim that showing your breasts means that you must have perfect ones, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I am like Shapiro in the fact that I do not wear bras. I find them restrictive and uncomfortable and anxiety inducing so I just do not wear them, but I do not have perfect breasts. I like them well enough to say that I wouldn’t do anything to change them, but it is haunting to even try to compare them to one of these celebrity pairs. I like myself just the way I am, but there is a sort of taboo that goes along with approaching the matter of throwing away all of one’s bras despite the fact that one might have larger or imperfect breasts.
I’ve had my trials and tribulations with bras for many years, and the moral of my story was that I just needed to rip it off and leave it in the dust. However, to the mind of an adolescent and a teenager, this is strictly taboo. This is an anathema in the realm of a public school classroom where perverted teachers have all the lay-land to restrict girls to covering up their ‘womanhood.’ And it becomes even more abhorrent when a young girl is harassed or worse by boys of her own age on this basis of her said womanhood. In this realm, children are not taught respect or of nature. We are taught the history and we are taught to conform to its ways and viewpoints.
A young girl might grow up to force herself to wear uncomfortable and restricting bras just for the sake of her trauma or education. If she is lucky, she might have the opportunity to grow up with perfect breasts and display them proudly, like the celebrities we all watch and point at like talking monkeys. If she is like me and chooses not wear bras, not as a political statement or for the eyes of watchers, but because it is a simple aspect of her well-being, then I congratulate her for building up the courage to respect herself. Lord knows, it’s not easy.
When considering this taboo in the realm of temples and religious walls, therein presents a similar front of perversion. In Catholicism, it would be a sin to not wear a bra to church as a young girl or woman might be prostituting herself towards God and all those that surround her.
It is no wonder that our culture might think that way: our idols are plastered on golden carriages with painted faces and wearing black mesh and jewels for all the world to see.
If we consider for a moment the Renaissance period and the notion toward the sacred feminine that was embodied here, we might consider a different approach to appreciating women’s bodies.
Marker of femininity and difference, site of sexuality, and sustainer of new life, the female breast has perennially occupied a privileged position in Western art. The breast in both figural and literary representations repeatedly signifies beyond itself and beyond the human body. 2
It seems to me that there was a divine source at play here, in the 14th to 17th centuries, but this is also where we get the creation of the corset, which altered this trajectory greatly.
If it were that this ideation went on into our new ages to profess this sanctity of woman’s bodies, we might have seen a different course of action, but the perversion of this divine feminine in our modern era has been an unsatisfying one.
It is not only men that pervert this distinction, it is a collective that has been infiltrated with demise on the property of a woman’s body. That is not to say that the men who painted luxurious women during the Renaissance were saints, it is only that these images have been left to stand the tests of time and serve as a ground to build upon.
Why would God, or Mother Earth or Our Creator create beings to only grow up to be restricted? I believe it is a strong method of grounding to free your breasts of their confinement and take a full breath of fresh air. I believe this can be a strong source of connecting with the sacred feminine as well: to just give them the freedom to exist. I think our medical research and ‘progression’ of science is by default doomed to fail because we do not know this strength of spiritual renewal within these walls.
It has only become a strange and inevitable necessity to walk into this mystery and uncover the blanket behind this wall of science and religion. Maybe there is more that lies beyond this restriction. . .
This paradox knows more than anyone you know, just ask it.
1CBC News. “Muslim Woman’s Bra Photo Sparks Controversy | CBC News.” British Columbia|CBC News, CBC/Radio Canada, 13 Apr. 2012.
2Yandell , Cathy. “Iconography and Iconoclasm: The Female Breast in French Renaissance Culture Vol. 83, No. 3 .” Jstor, The French Review, Feb. 2010.
