On what do you base this particular bit of “wisdom?” Some study of people who wear bras? Some mountain of evidence that this is why a woman wears a bra? Or did it just pop newly formed like Athena from your fertile brain?
Wait…what?
What do you mean what? Perky breasts aren’t enhanced by bras. If anything, their natural form is hidden as is their youthful jiggling. We consider this to be done for the sake of modesty, but ultimately older/less fortunate women are the benefactors. (Note how the topic of modesty is forgotten when the bra is used to squeeze breasts together and show off cleavage.) Bras are an equalizer among women. That’s what they do.
Sorry, I don’t agree with your assessment. At least, not post-1965. The bras my mother wore as a teen were perhaps designed to increase modesty, but the bras my teenaged goddaughters wear are not, even a little bit. Heck, they’re not even designed to be *underwear *anymore, they’re designed to be seen as another layer of visible clothing.
It’s not like we’re forcing our girls into bras and girdles anymore and checking them for bust lift in gym class. Bras for tweens/teens are cute and the girls are begging for them long before they need them for comfort. My Target sells “training” bras in the Girls section, apart from all the real bras, because 8 year olds who don’t need them want them because they look sexy and cute.
And I don’t understand what you mean by “perky breasts aren’t enhanced by bras”. Bras do subtly alter the shape of even young perky breasts…to enhance the look of the clothing worn over them. These high round things we’re sporting right now are a different shape than the cone boobs of the late 80’s, because now the t-shirts are sleek and long with lower cut necks, and then they were baggy and high necked. Young breasts are just as subject to the whims of fashion as older breasts, and just as enhanced by the shape of trendy bras.
I think you are not using the word “enhanced” the same way.
Perhaps. I’m using it to mean “make them look better” if better is defined as “more attractive under the prevailing clothing style”.
I mean, I go to clothing optional festivals. I see lots of naked breasts, of all ages. There are very, very few of them which look better (aesthetically) without a bra. Young breasts in particular, are kind of funny looking, generally with disproportionate areolas, mismatched sizes and no nipple protrusion. There’s a nice sweet spot around 17-25 where your breasts look the best they ever will, but that’s still, for most people, not as good as they look in a bra or under a shirt.
If Alex_Dubinsky is talking about purely sexual attractiveness, I’ll have to take his word for it, but I don’t think it can be extended to a larger aesthetic.
And you will note he totally failed to respond to my question about his “wisdom” on the matter. :dubious:
Perhaps this is the wiser way to deal with the question. 
Hey, you tilt at your windmills and I’ll tilt at mine. 
Well, as a woman, (an older one with roughly a decade of cumulative breastfeeding under my belt, ha, ha, no, they are nowhere NEAR that region, to date:D) I’ve found that exercise CAN lift and tone the breasts…there ARE muscles running under and around them on the chest wall which can be toned and which help support the fat composing the breast. (one of the best exercises is to hold the arms with elbows pointed outward from the chest level and press the palms together firmly…you can feel the muscles involved and even the little lift they give when worked)
I never found nursing in itself to result in any sag…why would it? What can is dramatic weight gain or loss (which could go along with breastfeeding, I suppose).
For me, gaining or losing weight shows first in my breasts and either one, if dramatic or sudden enough, can result in sagging, either from extra weight/gravity or loss of fat inside filling out the the skin.
Being a larger-breasted gal (38D last fitting, up from the 38C I’ve worn most of my non-nursing life), I wear a bra almost always when in public. It is more comfortable and looks better to ME (though the looks I get from men when out w/o one make me suspect to me “better” means more modest and not nec. more attractive sexually;))
But I don’t assume a bra prevents sagging…it just prevents drooling men and sweaty underneaths, lol.
My grandmother, in her 70’s and 80’s, had those long, saggy boobs. She was a thin, small-endowed woman all her life, so it was not excess weight, sudden or radical weight loss, nor was it breastfeeding, since I don’t think she actually did much of that, despite having had 5 kids…she was a modern, working gal. She told me once that when she was a young woman, the style was to BIND the breasts (1920s flapper chic) and that this had RUINED her breasts…broke down the tissues. She warned me never to do it (don’t worry, Granny:rolleyes:)
No idea if this was true or just her belief, but for whatever its worth.
I have to say that I don’t really know if bras do prevent ‘sagging’…but as I’m what most people might suppose is ‘well endowed’ - I think in USA sizing, im about a 38-40 E, NZ 10E - I have spent most of my life looking for that perfect bra. Up until very rescently, the selection of good brands available where I live was of the ‘chest-plate’ variatey. However, that has changed… I still have to spent $50-60 NZ, $20-30 USA? per bra if I want something that will last, and not end up around my waist in about 2 months.
If any of you people are looking for a good bra brand… try Fayreform. Ususally about as expensive as Triumph or Elle MacPherson bras… but the sizing starts at C and goes up to about I in some cases… and glee they have NICE ones… not just the kind that you might mistake for a sports bra of a maternity bra.
Uh, Curious.me, assuming an NZ 10 back in the same as an Aus 10 back (which wikipedia says it is), that’s 32 back in US/UK sizing, a 38-40 back would be 16-18.
Fayreform seemed an OK brand when I was within their size range, but not really anything special, though I did like that they had fairly narrow underwires for the volume of cup.
My mother claims her pregnancy with me is what caused her breasts to droop, however, hers are less droopy as a nearly-50 year old mother of five (who breastfeed all of us, all but one of us to at least a year) than mine are as a nulliparous 26 year old (but mine have been bigger since I was 13, so I guess they have more droop to have).
I agree with **InterestedObserver **about prevention of sweaty underneaths being a big reason for bras.
Well, if it’s about anecdotes, I know a lady with fairly large boobs who wears a bra all the time. I’m told she even sleeps in one. Hers are very shapely and not saggy despite being in her 30’s. I don’t think she has had children.
Feel free to sort out all the relevant factors yourself.
Genetics and luck.
Once upon a time, being large-breasted and otherwise quite small, I considered surgery. The free appointment about the facts of breast surgery convinced me–quite early in the presentation, actually–that this was not for me.
Some time later, I ran into an acquaintance who had formerly been quite busty but otherwise slender, like me, only now she was very, very trim all over. What had happened: She had become a bodybuilder. She now had muscles everywhere, which had decreased her breast tissue to the point where she no longer needed a bra. She did this by spending one to four hours a day in the gym. I’ll repeat that: one to four hours A DAY. Another thing that was clearly not for me.*
Minimizer bras are the cowardly (and cheap), lazy (and cheap) way to accomplish this, sort of. I don’t look particularly svelte. Actually they are not that cheap, until compared to surgery and one to four hours a day in the gym.
*I will note that I asked my personal trainer about this, because while I’m not spending one to four hours a day at the gym I do spend some time there. PT said it’s totally genetics and suggested that my friend had probably had a lot of fatty breast tissue. In other words, she didn’t think even a whole bunch of exercise would make me an a-cup.
How do you know they are not saggy if she always wears a bra?
Okay, for the sake of clarity, she does occassionally take her bra off for short periods of time.
But, they’re rigid visible clothing that hides the true form underneath. If your daughter had particularly firm and shapely breasts, but her classmates did not, then it would still work to equalize. With bras, the only factor that matters is breast size, not various aspects of breast quality. And even that gets evened out among girls with padding/uplifting. Nope, it’s an equalizer. It’s a fashion accessory, it’s a sexual object, it may even be an all-around enhancer, but it’s also an equalizer. (So, like, if all women burned their bras they might upset all the men, but they’ll also find themselves less equal. Similar thing with burqas.)
What a bizzare concept. Do you really conceive that the burqa is something women wear because ugly women want to keep pretty women from being more noticeable than they are??? Get real.