A bra, short for brassiere (US: /brəˈzɪər/, UK: /ˈbræsɪər/ or /ˈbræzɪər/; French: [bʁasjɛʁ]), is a form-fitting undergarment designed to support or cover the wearer's breasts. Bras are designed for a variety of purposes, including enhancing a woman's breast size, creating cleavage or for other aesthetic, fashion or more practical considerations. Swimsuits, camisoles, and backless dresses may have built-in breast support. Nursing bras are designed to facilitate breastfeeding. Some women have a medical and surgical need for brassieres, but most women wear them for fashion or cultural reasons. There is no evidence that bras really prevent breasts from sagging.

Bras have gained importance beyond their mere functionality as a garment.

Women's choices about what kind of bra to wear are consciously and unconsciously affected by social perceptions of the ideal female body shape, which changes over time. Bras have become a fashion item and cultural statement that are sometimes purposefully revealed by the wearer or even worn as outerwear.

Bras are complex garments made of many parts.

Manufacturing standards assume idealized, standard breast shapes and sizes that don't match most women's bodies.

Companies use vanity sizes, influencing women to purchase sizes that give the impression they are slimmer or more buxom.

In addition, international manufacturing standards and measurement methods vary widely.

Due to these challenges, women have a hard time finding a correctly fitting bra.

When they do find one that appears to fit, their tendency is continuing wearing the same bra size despite weight gain or loss.

All of these factors result in up to 85 per cent of those women who wear bras choosing and wearing the wrong size.^[1][2] Due to the difficulty in finding a correctly fitting bra, a majority of women commonly experience discomfort while wearing a bra.

Some women have protested societal expectations and sometimes school and workplace dress codes that require women to wear support garments. As early as 1873, author Elizabeth Stuart Phelps advocated that women burn their corsets. This was echoed in 1968 at the protest during the Miss America Pageant when women symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a large trash can. A reporter conflated their protest with Vietnam-era men who burned their draft cards, creating the trope of bra-burning feminists.

The term brassiere was used by the Evening Herald in Syracuse, New York, in 1893.^[3] It gained wider acceptance in 1904 when the DeBevoise Company used it in their advertising copy—although the word is actually Norman French for a child's undershirt. In French, it is called a soutien-gorge (literally, "throat-supporter").^[4] It and other early versions resembled a camisole stiffened with boning.^[5]

Vogue magazine first used the term brassiere in 1907,^[6][7] and by 1911 the word had made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary.^[8] On 3 November 1914, the newly formed US patent category for "brassieres" was inaugurated with the first patent issued to Mary Phelps Jacob.^[9][10] In the 1930s brassiere was gradually shortened to bra.^[4]

Wearing a garment to support the breasts may date back to ancient Greece.^[11] Women wore an apodesmos,^{[12]po%2Fdesmo)} later stēthodesmē,^[13] mastodesmos ^[14] and mastodeton,^[15] all meaning "breast-band", a band of wool or linen that was wrapped across the breasts and tied or pinned at the back.^[16][17] Roman women wore breast-bands during sport, such as those shown on the Coronation of the Winner mosaic (also known as the "Bikini mosaic").

Fragments of linen textiles found in East Tyrol in Austria dated to between 1440 and 1485 are believed to have been bras. Two of them had cups made from two pieces of linen sewn with fabric that extended to the bottom of the torso with a row of six eyelets for fastening with a lace or string. One had two shoulder straps and was decorated with lace in the cleavage.^[18][19]

From the 16th century, the undergarments of wealthier women in the Western world were dominated by the corset, which pushed the breasts upwards. In the later 19th century, clothing designers began experimenting with alternatives, splitting the corset into multiple parts: a girdle-like restraining device for the lower torso, and devices that suspended the breasts from the shoulder to the upper torso.^[11]

Women have played a large part in the design and manufacture of the bra, accounting for half the patents filed.^[20] The Dresden-based German, Christine Hardt, patented the first modern brassiere in 1899.^[21] Sigmund Lindauer from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Germany, developed a brassiere for mass production in 1912 and patented it in 1913. It was mass-produced by Mechanische Trikotweberei Ludwig Maier und Cie. in Böblingen, Germany.^[4] In the United States, Mary Phelps Jacob received a patent in 1914 for the first brassiere design that is recognized as the basis for modern bras.^[22][23] Mass production in the early 20th century made the garment widely available to women in the United States, England, Western Europe, and other countries influenced by western fashion.^[4] Metal shortages in World War I encouraged the end of the corset.

Brassieres were initially manufactured by small production companies and supplied to retailers.

The term "cup" was not used until 1916, and manufacturers relied on stretchable cups to accommodate different sized breasts.^[24] Women with larger or pendulous breasts had the choice of long-line bras, built-up backs, wedge-shaped inserts between the cups, wider straps, power Lastex, firm bands under the cup, and light boning.

In October 1932, the S.H.

Camp and Company correlated the size and pendulousness of breasts to letters A through D.^[5] Camp's advertising featured letter-labeled profiles of breasts in the February 1933 issue of Corset and Underwear Review. In 1937, Warner began to feature cup sizing in its products. Adjustable bands were introduced using multiple hook and eye closures in the 1930s.^[25] By the time World War II ended, most fashion-conscious women in Europe and North America were wearing brassieres, and women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America began to adopt it.^[4]

An urban legend that the brassiere was invented by a man named Otto Titzling ("tit sling") who lost a lawsuit with Phillip de Brassiere ("fill up the brassiere") originated with the 1971 book Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra and was propagated in a comedic song from the movie Beaches.^[26]

Mass-produced bras are manufactured to fit a prototypical woman standing with both arms at her sides.

The design assumes that both breasts are equally sized and symmetrical.^[27] Manufacturing a well-fitting bra is a challenge since the garment is supposed to be form-fitting but women's breasts may sag, vary in volume, width, height, shape, and position on the chest.^[28][29][30] Manufacturers make standard bra sizes that provide a "close" fit, however even a woman with accurate measurements can have a difficult time finding a correctly fitted bra because of the variations in sizes between different manufacturers. Some manufacturers create "vanity sizes" and deliberately mis-state the size of their bras in an attempt to persuade women that they are slimmer and more buxom.^[31][32]

A bra is one of the most complicated garments to make.

A typical design has between 20 and 48 parts, including the band, gore, side panel, cup, apex, neckline, underwire, strap, ring, slider, strap join, and closure.

Bras are built on a square frame model.

Lingerie designer Chantal Thomass said,

The primary component offering the most support is a chest band that wraps around the torso.

It supports two cups that are usually held in place by two shoulder straps. The chest band is usually closed in the back by a hook and eye fastener, but smaller busted models may be fastened at the front.^[34] Sleep bras or athletic bras do not have fasteners and are pulled on over the head and breasts. The section between the cups is called a gore. The section under the armpit where the band joins the cups is called the "back wing".^[35]

Bra components, including the cup top and bottom (if seamed), the central, side and back panels, and straps, are cut to manufacturer's specifications.

Many layers of fabric may be cut at the same time using computer-controlled lasers or bandsaw shearing devices.

The pieces are assembled by piece workers using industrial sewing machines or automated machines.

Coated metal hooks and eyes are sewn in by machine and heat processed or ironed into the back ends of the band and a tag or label is attached or printed onto the bra itself.^[35] The completed bras are folded (mechanically or manually), and packaged for shipment.^[36]

The chest band and cups, not the shoulder straps, are designed to support the weight of women's breasts.

Strapless bras rely on an underwire and additional seaming and stiffening panels to support them. The shoulder straps of some sports bras cross over at the back to take the pressure off the shoulders when arms are raised. Manufacturers continually experiment with proprietary frame designs. For example, the Playtex "18-Hour Bra" model utilizes an M-Frame design.^[35]

Bras were originally made of linen, cotton broadcloth, and twill weaves and sewn using flat-felled or bias-tape seams.

They are now made of a variety of materials, including Tricot, Spandex, Spanette, Latex, microfiber, satin, Jacquard, foam, mesh, and lace,^[35] which are blended to achieve specific purposes. Spandex, a synthetic fiber with built-in "stretch memory", can be blended with cotton, polyester, or nylon. Mesh is a high-tech synthetic composed of ultra-fine filaments that are tightly knit for smoothness.^[35]

Sixty to seventy per cent of bras sold in the UK and US have underwired cups. The underwire is made of metal, plastic, or resin.^[37][38][39] Underwire is built around the perimeter of the cup where it attaches to the band, increasing its rigidity to improve support, lift, and separation.^[34]

Wirefree or softcup bras have additional seaming and internal reinforcement.

By the late 1970s, wire-free bras were emerging both at Hanky Panky and at Hanro in Switzerland.

Cosabella in Italy and Eres (company) in France followed in the 1980s, as did Eberjey in the 1990s.

“These five companies set the pace for contemporary bralettes,” | Quote = Ellen Lewis The Lingerie Briefs editor |. Their designs were seen as casual feminist alternatives to the more constrictive undergarments that preceded them.

Many women slept in their bralettes.

|Work = The New York Time| URL = https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/fashion/bralettes-bras-no-underwire.html ^[153] | date = 2019 July 31 | T-shirt bras utilize molded cups that eliminate seams and hide nipples.

Others use padding or shaping materials to enhance bust size or cleavage.^[40]

In most countries, bras come in a band and cup size, such as 34C; 34 is the chest band, or the measurement around the torso directly underneath the breasts, and C is the cup size, which refers to the volume of the breasts.

Most bras are offered in 36 sizes; the Triumph "Doreen" comes in 67 sizes, up to 46J.^[1]

The cup size varies depending on the band size.

A D cup on a 38 band is larger in volume than a D cup on a 34 band, as the volume of a woman's breast increases as her chest band dimension increases.^[41] In countries that have adopted the European EN 13402 dress-size standard, the measurement is rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 centimetres (2.0 in).^[42][43]

International manufacturing standards and measurement systems vary widely.

Bras are designed for an ideal body, but women's anatomy vary widely.

Ten percent of women's breasts are asymmetrical, with the left breast being larger in 62 per cent of cases.^[44] One women's breasts may be ptotic and widely spaced, another's might be centered closely on the chest, upright, and very full.

As a result, finding a correctly fitting bra is extremely difficult.

When women find a bra that appears to fit, they tend to stay with that size, even though they may lose and gain weight.^{[20][32][45][46]}

In a survey in the United Kingdom, 60 per cent of over 2,000 women between the ages of 16 to 75 said they had had a bra fitting, and 99 per cent said that fit was the least important factor when selecting a bra.^[47] Increased publicity about the issue of poorly fitted bras has increased the number of women seeking a fitting.

The UK retailer Marks & Spencer stated that about 8,000 women are fitted for bras in their stores weekly.^[48] Despite this, about 80–85 per cent of women still wear the wrong bra size.^{[49][2][50][51]}

Bra experts recommend professional bra fittings from the lingerie department of a clothing store or a specialty lingerie store, especially for cup sizes D or larger, and particularly if there has been significant weight gain or loss, or if the wearer is continually adjusting her bra.^[1] Women in the UK change their bra size on average six times over their lifetimes.^[52]

Signs of a loose bra band include the band riding up the back.

If the band causes flesh to spill over the edges, it is too small.^[53] A woman can test whether a bra band is too tight or loose by reversing the bra on her torso so that the cups are in the back and then check for fit and comfort.^[54] Experts suggest that women choose a band size that fits using the outermost set of hooks. This allows the wearer to use the tighter hooks as the bra stretches during its lifetime.^[55]

Bras may be designed to enhance a woman's breast size, or to create cleavage, or for other aesthetic, fashion, or more practical considerations. Nursing bras are designed to aid breastfeeding.^[11] Compression bras, such as sports bras, push against and minimize breast movement, whereas encapsulation bras have cups for support.^[56] Breast support may be built into some swimsuits, camisoles and dresses.^[57][58]

Bras come in a variety of styles, including backless, balconette, convertible, shelf, full cup, demi-cup, minimizing, padded, plunge, posture, push-up, racerback, sheer, strapless, T-shirt, underwire, unlined, and soft cup.^[59]

Women's choices about what bra to wear are consciously and unconsciously affected by social perceptions of the ideal female body shape, which changes over time.^[60] As lingerie, women wear bras for sex appeal. Bras can also be used to make a social statement as evidenced by Jean-Paul Gaultier's designs and the cone-shaped bra Madonna wore outside her clothing on her Blond Ambition World Tour.^[61]

In the 1920s in the United States – the flapper era – the fashion was to flatten the breasts. During the 1940s and 1950s, the sweater girl became fashionable, supported by a bullet bra (known also as a torpedo or cone bra) as worn by Jane Russell and Patti Page.^[62] In the early 1960s, smaller breasts gained popularity, and in the late 1990s larger breasts became more fashionable.^[48] Iris Marion Young described preferences in the United States in 1990: "round, sitting high on the chest, large but not bulbous, with the look of firmness." This is regarded as contradictory in several ways.^[63]

As outerwear, bras in the form of bikini tops in the 1950s became the acceptable public display in modern times.^[61] During the 1960s, designers and manufacturers introduced padded and underwire bras.

After the Miss America protest in September 1968, manufacturers were concerned that women would stop wearing bras. In response, many altered their marketing and claimed that wearing their bra was like "not wearing a bra".^[64] In the 1970s women sought more comfortable and natural-looking bras.^[62]

Victoria's Secret commissions a fantasy bra every fall. In 2003 it hired the jeweller Mouawad to design one containing more than 2500 carats of diamonds and sapphires; valued at US$10 million, it was the world's most valuable bra at the time.^[65]

Sports bras were first invented in 1975. Women wore them under other clothing for the next 25 years.^[66] But on 10 July 1999, Brandi Chastain scored the fifth kick in the penalty shootout to give the United States the win over China in the final game of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final. In celebration, she spontaneously whipped off her jersey, exposing her sports bra. Her act is regarded by some as a historical event that boosted wearing sports bras alone.^[66][67] From that point forward, sports bras were increasingly worn as outerwear.^[68]

Madonna was one of the first to start showing her bra straps, in the late 1980s.^[69] A corset she wore as outerwear during her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour sold for US$52,000 in 2012 at the Christie's Pop Culture auction in London.^[70] Versace's fall 2013 couture collection featured fashions that were open in the front, revealing underwire bras.^[71] It became fashionable from the early 1990s to wear clothing that showed bra straps.^{[72][73][74][75]}

Wearing clothes that reveal the bra or straps became so common that Cosmopolitan created guidelines in 2012 on how to expose them. Advice included avoiding plain, flesh-toned, smooth-cup bras, so that the exposure does not appear accidental; making sure the bra is in good condition; and wearing a style that either matches the colour of the outerwear or is dramatically different.^[76]

While a few women have a medical and surgical need to wear a brassiere, informal surveys have found that many women began wearing bras to be fashionable, to conform to social or maternal pressure, or for physical support.

Very few cited comfort as the reason.

In fact, many women experience so much discomfort that they remove their bra as soon as they can.

Many Western women recognize that they have been socialized to wear bras, and some who choose to go without report feeling exposed or "subject to violation".^[77][78][4]

In Western society, there is an increasing trend towards bralessness among a number of women, especially millennials, who have expressed opposition to and are giving up wearing bras.^[79] Being seen in public while not wearing a bra is becoming more acceptable, encouraging more women to go without. In 2016, Allure magazine fashion director Rachael Wang wrote, "Going braless is as old as feminism but it seems to be bubbling to the surface more recently as a direct response to Third Wave moments like #freethenipple hashtag campaign, increased trans-visibility like Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Faircover... and Lena Dunham’s show Girls (which features young girls often without bras)."^[79] Going braless, which for many years was considered a political statement, has in recent years become fashionable.^[81]

In an online survey for All You magazine in 2013, 25 per cent of women reported that they do not wear a bra every day.^[82] Surveys have reported that 5–25 per cent of Western women do not wear a bra.^[65][83][84] A National No Bra Day was first observed in the United States on 9 July 2011.^[85] Women posted on Twitter about the relief they felt when taking off their bra.^[86] More than 250,000 people expressed an interest in "attending" the day on a Facebook page.^[87] No Bra Day is now observed internationally on 13 October.^[65]

A Harris Poll commissioned by Playtex asked more than 1,000 women what they like in a bra. Among the respondents, 67 per cent said they prefer wearing a bra to going braless, while 85 per cent wanted to wear a "shape-enhancing bra that feels like nothing at all." They were split as regards underwire bras: 49 per cent said they prefer underwire bras, the same percentage as those who said they prefer wireless bras.^[40] According to underwire manufacturer S & S Industries of New York, who supply bras to Victoria's Secret, Bali, Warner's, Playtex, Vanity Fair, and other labels, about 70 per cent of bra-wearing women wear underwire bras.^[88]

Bras are not universally worn around the world; in some third-world countries bras may cost up to 10–30 hours of a woman's wages, making them unaffordable to most of the population.^[89][90][91] As of 2011, women in Fiji needed to pay up to a week's wages for a new bra.^[92] Bras are highly prized at second-hand markets in West Africa.^[90][91] The Uplift Project provides recycled bras to women in developing countries.^[93] Since 2005 they have shipped 330,000, including to Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, and Cambodia.^[89]

In 2009 Somalia's hard-line Islamic group Al-Shabaab forced women to shake their breasts at gunpoint to see if they were wearing bras, which they called "un-Islamic".^[94][95] A resident of Mogadishu whose daughters were whipped said, "The Islamists say a woman's chest should be firm naturally, or flat."^[94]

Consumers spend around $16 billion a year worldwide on bras.^[96] In the US during 2012, women owned an average of nine bras and wore six on a regular basis.^[96] That increased from 2006, when the average American woman owned six, one of which was strapless, and one in a colour other than white.^[97] British women in a 2009 survey reported that they owned an average of 16 bras.^[48]

The average bra size among North American women has changed from 34B in 1983 to a 34DD in 2012–2013,^[98] and from 36C in 2013 to 36DD in the UK during 2014–2015.^[99] The change in bra size has been linked to growing obesity rates, breast implants, increased birth control usage, estrogen mimicking pollutants, the availability of a larger selection of bras, and women wearing better fitting bras.^[98][100]

Bras are made in Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, India, and China.

While there has been some social pressure from the anti-sweatshop and anti-globalization movements on manufacturers to reduce use of sweatshop labour, most major apparel manufacturers rely on them directly and indirectly. Prior to 2005, a trade agreement limited textile imports to the European Union and the US. China was exporting US$33.9 billion in textiles and clothing each year to the EU and the US. When those quotas expired on 1 January 2005, the so-called Bra Wars began. Within six months, China shipped 30 million more bras to the two markets: 33 per cent more to the US and 63 per cent more to the EU.^[101] As of 2014, an average bra cost £29.80.^[102] As of 2012, Africa imported US$107 million worth of bras, with South Africa accounting for 40 per cent. Morocco was second and Nigeria third, while Mauritius topped purchasing on a per capita basis.^[103]

In countries where labour costs are low, bras that cost US$5–7 to manufacture sell for US$50 or more in American retail stores.

As of 2006, female garment workers in Sri Lanka earned about US$2.20 per day.^[101] Similarly, Honduran garment factory workers in 2003 were paid US$0.24 for each $50 Sean John sweatshirt they made, less than one-half of one per cent of the retail price.^[104] In 2009, residents in the textile manufacturing city of Gurao in the Guangdong province of China made more than 200 million bras. Children were employed to assemble bras and were paid 0.30 yuan for every 100 bra straps they helped assemble. In one day they could earn 20 to 30 yuan.^[105]

In 1968 at the feminist Miss America protest, protesters symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can". These included bras,^[106] which were among items the protesters called "instruments of female torture"^[107] and accouterments of what they perceived to be enforced femininity. A local news story in the Atlantic City Press erroneously reported that "the bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women's magazines burned in the 'Freedom Trash Can'".^[108][109] Individuals who were present said that no one burned a bra nor did anyone take off her bra.^[107][110] However, a female reporter (Lindsy Van Gelder) covering the protest drew an analogy between the feminist protesters and Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards, and the parallel between protesters burning their draft cards and women burning their bras was encouraged by some organizers including Robin Morgan. "The media picked up on the bra part", Carol Hanisch said later. "I often say that if they had called us 'girdle burners,' every woman in America would have run to join us."^[110][111]

Feminism and "bra-burning" became linked in popular culture.^[112][113] The analogous term jockstrap-burning has since been coined as a reference to masculism.^[114] While feminist women did not literally burn their bras, some stopped wearing them in protest.^[115][116] The feminist author Bonnie J. Dow has suggested that the association between feminism and bra-burning was encouraged by individuals who opposed the feminist movement.^[106] "Bra-burning" created an image that women weren't really seeking freedom from sexism, but were attempting to assert themselves as sexual beings.^[117] This might lead individuals to believe, as Susan J. Douglas wrote, that the women were merely trying to be "trendy, and to attract men."^{[118][119][120][121]} Some feminist activists believe that anti-feminists use the bra burning myth and the subject of going braless to trivialize what the protesters were trying to accomplish at the feminist 1968 Miss America protest and the feminist movement in general.^{[122][123][124]}

The trope of feminists burning their bras was anticipated by an earlier generation of feminists who called for burning corsets as a step toward liberation. In 1873 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward wrote:

Some feminists began arguing in the 1960s and 1970s that the bra was an example of how women's clothing shaped and even deformed women's bodies to male expectations.

Professor Lisa Jardine listened to feminist Germaine Greer talk about bras during a formal college dinner in Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1964 (Greer had become a member of that college in 1962):

Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch (1970) became associated with the anti-bra movement because she pointed out how restrictive and uncomfortable a bra could be.^[127] "Bras are a ludicrous invention", she wrote, "but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression."^[128]

Susan Brownmiller in her book Femininity (1984) took the position that women without bras shock and anger men because men "implicitly think that they own breasts and that only they should remove bras."^[129]

The feminist author Iris Marion Young wrote in 2005 that the bra "serves as a barrier to touch" and that a braless woman is "deobjectified", eliminating the "hard, pointy look that phallic culture posits as the norm." Without a bra, in her view, women's breasts are not consistently shaped objects but change as the woman moves, reflecting the natural body.^[129] Other feminist anti-bra arguments from Young in 2005 include that training bras are used to indoctrinate girls into thinking about their breasts as sexual objects and to accentuate their sexuality.^[129] Young also wrote in 2007 that, in American culture, breasts are subject to "[c]apitalist, patriarchal American media-dominated culture [that] objectifies breasts before such a distancing glance that freezes and masters."^[130] The academic Wendy Burns-Ardolino wrote in 2007 that women's decision to wear bras is mediated by the "male gaze".^[131]

Apparel company Ruby Ribbon surveyed 3,000 women in 2014 in advance of National No Bra Day about their attitudes towards their breasts and bras.

Among respondents, 92 percent said they simply want support and comfort and are less interested in sex appeal or fashionable colors and designs.

Twenty-one percent rated their bra "An Enemy – I wish I had never met her", and nearly half (46 per cent) answered, "A Business Partner – I put up with her".

When asked to describe their bra in one word, the most popular term was "uncomfortable".^[132][133] Many women look forward to the time of day when they can take off their bra.^[133]

Some women experience generalized breast discomfort and tenderness from fibrocystic breast changes, and their breast tissue is often described as "lumpy", "rope-like", or "doughy".^[134] Doctors often recommend that women wear a well-fitted, supportive bra to help resolve the symptoms.^{[135][136][137]}

Biomechanical studies have demonstrated that, depending on the activity and the size of a woman's breast, when she walks or runs braless, her breasts may move up and down by 4 to 18 centimetres (1.6 to 7.1 in) or more, and also oscillate side to side.^[138]

Researchers have also found that as women's breast size increased, they took part in less physical activity, especially vigorous exercise.

Few very-large-breasted women jogged, for example.

To avoid exercise-related discomfort and pain, medical experts suggest women wear a well-fitted sports bra during activity.^{[138][139][140]} Researchers also recommend that large-breasted women consider "swimming and other water-based activities like aqua aerobics or deep water running. The buoyant forces of the water slow the downward movement of breasts," reduce exercise‐induced breast motion, and lessen breast-related discomfort.^[141][142]

Women sometimes wear bras because they mistakenly believe they prevent breasts from sagging (ptosis) as they get older.^[143] Physicians, lingerie saleswomen, teen girls, and adult women used to believe that bras were medically required to support breasts. In a 1952 article in Parents' Magazine, Frank H. Crowell wrote that it was important for teen girls to begin wearing bras early. This would prevent sagging breasts, stretched blood vessels, and poor circulation later on.^[144]

This belief was based on the incorrect idea that since breasts cannot anatomically support themselves, wearing a brassiere makes a difference as a woman ages.^[143][145] But researchers, bra manufacturers, and health professionals cannot find any evidence to support the idea that wearing a bra for any amount of time decreases breast sagging.^[146] Bra manufacturers are careful to claim that bras only affect the shape of breasts while they are being worn.^[145][147] The key factors influencing breast ptosis over a woman's lifetime are cigarette smoking, her number of pregnancies, gravity, higher body mass index, larger bra cup size, and significant weight gain and loss.^[148][149]