The truth about bras
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By Anna-Stina Nykänen
The household magazine Kodin kuvalehti had a great story about bras. There was a picture of four normal Finnish women posing without shirts, their stomachs bare: ordinary women - no photo models!
One of them had very large breasts, the other had really small ones, one was breastfeeding, and one had undergone a mastectomy. Wow!
It seemed like a daring thing to do. After all, it is still quite radical to show normal women in pictures just for the sake of their bodies. The sight made my hair stand on end.
All of the women looked really good. They were calm and satisfied. They gave their own names, ages, and opinions - in the way that anonymous models do not.
Really great.
For once it was shown how different women really are, and I do not mean just the breasts - I mean ideals as well.
The large-breasted woman wondered why anyone would want large breasts. For her they were literally a pain in the neck.
At least when I was young I thought that all women wanted big ones. The bigger, the better, I thought.
Now I think I know where to draw the line: normal working women do not want breasts to steal all attention. Perhaps this is why many female executives want to be thin?
It is also interesting how the same woman can have such different breasts at different times of her life. The woman with the small breasts had a C-cup before she lost weight, and her breasts also went down to an A-cup. A considerable change.
A friend of mine says that she had no breasts at all before her children were born. Then they stayed big. But with age, her breasts changed again completely. They became flatter and longer. They were her third breasts, she says.
For some people breasts are naturally mismatched. How is one supposed to find a bra in that situation? The fact is that buying bras is ridiculously difficult.
Contrary to what is suggested by advertising and fashion stories, the most difficult aspect of choosing a bra is not whether or not to get a romantic or stunning one. One often has to make do with the only one that fits, no matter how ugly it looks.
A bra is not just an ornament. It is a necessity, without which many will not get by. The enthusiasm for burning bras has collapsed since the 1970s, since this fact was admitted to be true. Nowadays freedom is expressed by allowing bras to be seen. Even my mother, who is in her seventies, feels that there is nothing wrong with having a beautiful bra show through a thin blouse.
So they can also be an ornament, if it works otherwise.
I feel that every woman has the right to have a good bra. Bad ones are terrible - worse than shoes that are constantly chafing.
It is hard for a man to imagine how bothersome it is to try to hold a serious conversation, while constantly feeling the shoulder strap of the bra slip downwards. How is one supposed to fix it in a subtle manner? You can't just reach under your collar without completely losing credibility.
Perhaps rich women have their own bras made to order, as wealthy men do with their shoes. When will the My Left Foot movement be joined by My Left Breast?
Women usually remember their first bra - where they got it and with whom. Did a mother try to impose it on her daughter, or did the daughter have to beg for one? Did others already have one? They remember what it looked like, and if it was fashionable. Was it a source of derision, or envy?
Nowadays some people are worried when mothers buy something akin to a bra for a very young daughter.
The problem is not that a child does not yet have breasts - perish the thought. The problem is that buying the first bra has traditionally been an important ritual in growing up to womanhood, and it is not good to try to turn a child into a woman before she is ready for it.
Many adult women use bras even though there is little for them to contain. A bra is part of being a woman, no matter what it holds.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.3.2006 in the weekly supplement Nyt
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
