A short (Western) history of bras and of leaking milk

Many 21st century women are most comfortable when wearing a bra

As a woman with petite breasts, I haven't needed to wear a bra. I'm lucky to be able to run, exercise, and move around freely without any unpleasant breast weight or discomfort. Not every woman can say the same, due to the great diversity of normal female breast shape.

I also don't like the sensation of the bra against my skin hour after hour, or the mild but constant sensation of constraint around my ribcage. I went without a bra more often when I was young, but most of the time when I'm in public I wear a bra, despite the low-level discomfort. This is one of my concessions to the norms of the society in which I live. And the first thing I do at the end of a working day is to take my bra off.

But there are women for whom bra-wearing is mandatory for comfort and wellbeing, even at home, because of the unpleasant or painful effects of the weight of their breasts.

And many breastfeeding women will wear a bra because of the way their milk leaks.

Perhaps one day we'll let our milk run free!

To my mind there's no shame in the visible leaking of your precious milk. I like to believe that one day those moist dark patches on your garments will be seen again for what they are, a celebration of the hard work you are doing as you nurture a small child, something to be proud of because you're creating the future of this planet!

But I believe the main thing we need to change right now are our health system blind spots about how to support comfortable and enjoyable breastfeeding.

I hope that your daughters and granddaughters won't face so much conflicting and confusing advice when their time comes to breastfeed. And I hope they are better able to challenge the strange and repressive judgements directed towards outward signs of our milk's gloriously abundant flow!

The Greeks, the Romans, and the medieval bra of Western traditions

There are references to female breast bands in literature from Ancient Greece, but breast bands were more regularly worn by Roman women. The Romans (at least, the upper class Roman men who wrote history) viewed generous, low-hanging breasts very negatively: young Roman girls wore breast bands in the hope of preventing breast sag.

The ancient Romans fundamentally shaped Western civilisation, with their scientific and engineering genius and their military might. Yet at the very foundations of the Roman Empire we find the dominance of the land-owning male and his brutal subordination of slaves and women. This is the context in which bras first began to trend in the West!

You can find out about a completely different kind of cultural imagining of the female breast elewhere in Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation. There is also a lovely discussion of ancient brassieres of India here.

More than a thousand years later, in Europe, a medieval version of the bra was incorporated into a woman's garments, both for support of her breasts but also for celebration of the breast shapes which were considered attractive to men. Although the kind of breast shape viewed as most attractive had changed since the Roman Empire, still the most socially desirable breast shape was determined by the men!

Corsetry, the flappers, and industrialisation of the bra

From the 1600s, conical undergarments made from whalebone, known as 'stays', became separate items of clothing. By the 1800s they were called 'corsets', a mandatory item of clothing for fashionable European women, designed to present an hour glass figure.

But fashionable corsets were so restrictive of health and movement that by the late 19th century even male doctors protested the health impacts.

The fesity pioneering women of the Victorian Dress Reform movement promoted emancipation from corsetry, and began to design and wear more comfortable outer and under-garments, often at the same time as they campaigned for the right to vote. During this period, various bra-like garments were patented. Then at the beginning of the First World War, women were asked to stop buying corsets entirely, to free the metal up for war production.

The 1920s flapper era was characterized by little bust definition and a bandeau bra which flattened the breasts, much like the breast bands worn by ancient Roman girls. Again, health professionals campaigned against the physical problems caused by breast flattening, and by 1924 patents had been filed for full-figured, uplift and nursing bras. Cup sizes and adjustable bands using multiple eye and hook positions emerged in the 1930s. By the end of the Second World War, most women wore bras manufactured in factories.