November 11, 2009 • 19 mins
Most modern women wear bras on a daily basis, but why? How did these breast-supporting garments become so common? What purpose do they serve, exactly? Tune in to this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You to discover some surprising facts about the bra.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told You?
From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen, I'm Molly, So Molly. Today we're talking about
(00:23):
bras yes rasiers. So um. I thought a good way
to kick it off would be for us to share
our cup sizes with our audience. I don't think that's
a good idea. It's totally kidding now, there's no way
that would happen. Uh No. But instead of sharing our
own our own braa size is Molly, why don't we
enlighten our listeners with the average bra siyes in America? Okay,
(00:47):
so the average braath size has actually gone up in
the US over the past fifteen years. We have gone
from a nation of thirty four bees on average to
thirty six sees. And it might be because of things
like breast augmentation and the rising of obesity rate. So
(01:07):
it doesn't necessarily mean that we're just all getting a
lot more voluptuous. Well, I guess we are getting more voluptuous,
but not because we're more predisposed bo speaking of big boobs,
do you know what the largest bra size on record is?
Do tell? Crying to the Guinness Book of World Records.
It's a forty eight v V as in Victoria. Those
(01:29):
breastway fifty six pounds when you put them together. That's
another fun fact to want smart contacts. Yes, in a
woman was killed by lightning once when the lightning struck
the underwire and her bra. That is unfortunate. Did you
also know, Molly that, uh, in some cases breasts can
flap against the chest with enough force to break the
(01:52):
clavical Oh my god, probably if you had you know,
the VS you were talking about. I think if I
had VS, I could barely make enough force and moving. Um.
Here's here's a fun fact that Chris and I both like.
Do you know, um, the first sports bra was two
jock straps sewn together and called a job bra. Let's
(02:13):
hope that those were not used shock straps. Um. Did
you know that Triumph International has invented an anti smoking bra,
which admits a mysterious fragrance designed to kill the desire
to spoke? Sounds useful. There are also anti mugging bras
that can monitor heart rate and single the police in
the event of panic. There's also a bras been designed
(02:33):
to detect radiation in case of nuclear attacks. So maybe
you're apocalyptic bra We're ready for it. Bring it on.
I mean, bras are just constantly evolving, so constantly evolving,
and yet holly eight out of ten women supposedly are
wearing the wrong size bra. So even though we have
all of these choices to pick from, all types of
(02:54):
fabrics and cuts and cups, et cetera, we're still just
in the wrong ones. I know it's weird, but you
know what, what is also weird is usually when we
talk about an item of clothing or accessory, be at
high heels or wedding dresses, where we go back through
history and to kind of trace its evolution. And what
was weird to me when we are researching this podcast
is that the bras history is a little bit more
(03:16):
murk here than you would think it would be. Even
the person who they attribute the first bra design too
is somewhat contentious, but we could say we can't say
with certainty that the first patent for a breast supporter
was granted um in the mid eighteen hundreds. Too, man
named Lumen L. Chapman of Camden, New Jersey. But don't
(03:38):
just think that this is some male invention. About half
the patents that have been awarded for things related to
bras have been awarded to women. So this is kind
of this uh piece of architecture. It's so frequently referred
to as a bridge when you're reading about bra design
that has been constantly updated and changed by women. Yeah.
For instance, in eighteen nine, we have a woman named
(04:01):
Marie two Sick of New York City who patented a
breast supporter, which was basically the precursor to an underwire bra.
So no one person really gets credit for the invention
of the brawl. They kind of painted as this natural
evolution From course, it's um, you know, supporting the breasts
from below while cutting off all of your oxygen to
supporting the breast from above by using shoulder straps and
(04:24):
hopefully giving you a little bit more room to move. Yeah.
Because one of the reasons why bras came into vogue
is because they simply fit better with the fashions of
the day. For instance, with flapper style, bras became a
lot more popular because at the time they were used
to sort of squash down the breast because the flapper
(04:45):
dresses were very low cut, and so it was actually
seen as a little more of a modest covering than
a corset that would kind of serve as a more
of a boostier. Yeah, early early designs just completely flattened
and don't lift and shape the way our aimed wonder
brawls do now. But over the years I was reading
the things that have been um used for bras include wire, cork, rubber,
(05:09):
sheet metal or cardboard covered with silk, and some rubber
breastpads made of horsehair, elk hair, and antelope hair. I mean,
these are these things have a weird history. Now. The
word brazier first shows up in Vogue in a Vogue
magazine ad in October of nineteen o seven. Um, and
(05:30):
the term brazier comes from an old French word that
means arm protector and it refers to part of a
military uniform. And then the word later became used for
a military breastplate, and then for a type of woman's corset,
and then um supposedly in the nineteen thirties, college students
were the ones to shorten brazier to our slang bra.
(05:52):
So that's why when I got dressed this morning, I
was like, I'm putting on my arm protector and going
to war. Um, we want to talk about maiden form. Yes,
they're very iconic when it comes to bras. And what
I thought was pretty cool is that there was this
dress shop called Enid Frocks, delightful little name. It was
owned by Enich Bassett and in Enid and her seamstress
(06:12):
were like, you know, our dresses would be even more
awesome if we had different kinds of undergarments that women
can put on with them. So they made bras and
they would give them away when you bought a dress.
And these were bando style bras that they were making,
and they gradually picked up became so popular they stopped
giving them away with dresses. And then about a decade
(06:33):
after Ida and Enid started making their bando style bras,
a manufacturer S. H. Camp and Company first match breast
sizes to the A through D cups that we have
now and that was in three interesting. So as the
years go on, we have all sorts of um new design, summer, sexy,
summer modest. You know, bras really can't decide what they
(06:55):
want to be. Victoria's secret comes along, and it was
designed to help a man feel comfortable when he is
out shopping for the bra because it was so European. Yeah,
the first Victoria's Secret opened in in nine and you know,
the Wonder Bra was the big sensation in the mid nineties.
Probably our last big bra moment as a universe was
when the Wonder bral came along and instead of um
(07:17):
lifting and separating, it lifted and pushed, giving the woman
a cleavage. You know, there's something that I did not
realize Molly about bras is that there too main types
of ways of bras are designed. There. Either design is
encapsulation bras or compression bras, and encapsulation bras are basically
(07:38):
two separately large molded cups that completely contain the breast,
whereas compression bras squash our boobs against our bodies to
reduce the amount of weight that the that the bra
really has to support. Yeah, and so then the question
becomes which brad do I need? And if you're asking
(07:58):
that question, you're sort of like, well, I am I
even wearing a bra in the first place, because you know,
we think about corsets like that was just that's just
kind of ridiculous. That was just to have an arbitrarily
really skinny waist. Yeah, And as actress Marlowe Thomas said
on her show that girl, God created women to bounce.
I don't know if I entirely agree with Maho Thomas,
but that was in the in the seventies when when
(08:19):
ladies were getting a little looser with their with their
brazil when they were allegedly burning bras, which, as we
debunked in our Feminist podcast, bras were never burned. Yeah,
but they are because they essentially, you know, when you
think about maiden form, they came about because they wanted
to look good under clothing, to present the breast better
under clothing. Are they are they just you know, superficial?
(08:42):
Were they a good symbol to burn because they were
just making women look like men wanted them to look
right because the purpose, one of the main purposes of
the corset was to exaggerate the female shape, to create
this kind of overly feminine um body form for women
as a as a way to kind of set them
(09:03):
apart from from men. Uh So, the question is by extension,
does that mean that we are still holding up just
reinforcing old archaic gender norms by wearing bras, which are
still just presenting our breasts in more aesthetically fleasing ways.
And it turns out is it is largely aesthetic. I
was reading and I was really shocked. Maybe everyone else
(09:25):
knows this but me. But bras. But bras do not
prevent breast from sagging. Yeah, they do not. Uh, they
don't fight the good fight against gravity. If you wear
a bra your whole life thinking you're protecting things, you
are not. They're gonna sack. They're gonna sack, just gonna happen.
But if you do feel more comfortable on a bra,
then that is really the only purpose of abroad that
(09:48):
can be found. But there have been a lot of
interesting studies about how our boobs move around because there
is one thing, um that bras you do, and that's
with sports bras specifically, they do keep our our breasts
from jiggling around because for some women who have very
large breasts, that can be really painful, and simply having
that extra support you can to help out the load
(10:11):
that their their back would be bearing it wise, Yeah,
tons women don't exercise because they can't find a good
bra that fits theman. In fact, very little was known
up until recently about how breasts moved when a woman
exercise like that sounds silly because you can look at
a woman bouncing around and think, hey, she bounces. But
people used to think that you just bounced up and down.
(10:32):
Not so, not so. Not until Julie Steel came along
and put all these light emitting diodes on women and
then tracked the movement of those lights as they ran,
did we know how breasts really moved? Breasts actually moved
in a signed new soidl like a figure eight pattern,
which I found very surprising because, like you said, I
(10:53):
thought that there was just a bunch of up and
down jiggling and small breasts. In fact, Molly can move
more than three inches vertically during a jog, and that's
just small breast. Christian. Iously, the larger they are, the
more momentum that's going to be generated. That is Newton's
second law and action. The next time you're in physics
class and need to explain Newton to your classmates, use
(11:15):
breasts as an example. Yeah, you can just personalize it
with a jog in place. You have to cause a
really awkward silence. Yeah, let us know how that works out.
For you. Um, but if you wear a sports pra though,
it can reduce studies studies, Yes, people have studied this. Uh.
Studies have shown that sports bras will reduce that movement
by in a cup women and up to fifty five
(11:39):
for G cup women. Right, But don't not exercise because
you think that your breast will sack as a result
of all that running. You know, just because you're bouncing.
It does not that's not really a factor in the sagging. Yeah.
There is a medical term for breast stagging, which is
called breast potosis. But unfortunately, uh for some braws or
not the cure for potosis. Yeah, it's kind of depressing.
(12:03):
I'm not gonna lie. Now, what about Molly. There is
one kind of strange mythods out there about the possible
harms of wearing a bra. Some people have said that
bra wearing underweire braws make it more likely for YouTube
developed breast cancer. Yeah, there was this study that was
done by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Gris Miser probably
(12:24):
didn't pronounce that correctly, and they did. The study made
a lot of news lit of headlines that said that
women who wore a bra twenty four hours a day
had a one thirteen fold increase in breast cancer incidents
compared to women who wore a bra for less than
twelve hours a day. And so what they suggested is
that the bras put enough pressure on the breast and
the surrounding areas that um, your lymph nodes would cause
(12:46):
like toxic material would build up in there instead of
getting flushed out naturally, and so it kept all this
toxin in and it uh increased risk for breast cancer.
But what they did when they did the studies, they
didn't examine any other risk factors for breast cancer, and
so a big risk factor for breast cancers obesity. So
(13:07):
obese women with really big boobs probably are wearing bras
more often than those who aren't. So it's not necessarily
that it was not necessarily because of the bra, but
perhaps because of obesity. And speaking of um obesity, that
is one one way that wearing a bra, Wearing the
wrong bra, especially um can cause um pain, especially women
(13:29):
who who are larger, because if they're if their straps
don't fit correctly, they're going to dig into um the
muscles in the back and trigger the nerves that run
all the way down your arm and even cause numbness
in your little fingers. So there can be health detriments
to wearing a bra. So that's why it's so important
to get a correctly sized bra. But there aren't as
(13:53):
many health benefits unless a bra helps you exercise. And
now here's a fun just as a way to wrap
it up, a fun way that bras can hurt your
male or female counterpart. Actually not really females, because they
probably know how to work abra. But according to the
Daily Mail, young men have such a poor understanding of
the opening and closing of bras that they risk injury.
(14:14):
What injury, finger injuries the kind that you could probably
get like when you were rock climbing, fractures and ligament damage.
And so they did the study to show just how
at risk men are for this because they don't know
how to work for bras. In one test, it took
men an average of twenty seven seconds to remove a
braw using both hands. Right handed men using their left
hand took in an average of fifty eight seconds. Well,
(14:36):
one unfortunate volunteer took a passion killing twenty minutes, according
to the Daily Mail. Wow, So minutes to avoid finger injury.
For your fella, teach him how to take off the bra, yeah,
or just go brawl? IS's molly about that? Apparently we
haven't talked about why don't we just when we just
let them let I'm hanging free. And that's how we
(14:58):
learned from research, is if you're comfortable that way, there's
no medical reason to put on a bra. The whole
reason we wear them is because we've been taught by
a society wear them, and now it's hard to imagine
life without them. Yeah, I mean, I certainly can't go
brothers at this point, not because of size, I guess,
but just because it feels weird not to have one on.
Speak for yourself, Molly, starting a revolution, you're gonna go,
(15:21):
You're gonna join. I don't know, we'll see it does get,
if anything? In the winter, it just just a little
insulation against the cold. Yes, that's true. So probably for
the winter months, we'll keep these puppies indoors, all right,
the listeners, it's up to you to tell us. Do
your puppies stay indoors like Kristian's or do they run
(15:41):
free and wild like wild dogs like Marlo Thomas is yeah.
I mean, are you guys bouncers? Are are you compressors?
We want to know all about bras you like and
that you don't like, and I want that selfishly. It's recommendations.
What I'm asking for, ladies, its recommendations. And Molly, let's
not forget another men too. BRA's effect men and women alike,
(16:03):
as Seinfeld notably demonstrated, men can wear bras. The bro
all right, Molly, well it is time for a little
bit of listener mail and I have a very um
nowice email here, uh from Lesia and she said, I've
never really given much thought to my hair until I
got to college. I'm a black Woman's in my hair,
while playing a central role in my life, was never
really my responsibility. As a child, I remember having to
(16:25):
get up early with my mother on school days, sitting
in her lap while she brushed and braid my hair
for the day before driving me to school. She also
remembers it took hours her wash her hair in the morning, um,
and she would wash she v while her mom combed
and dried her hair for thirty minutes and then oiled
her scout for fifteen to thirty minutes, and then they
would go to the kitchen where her mom would use
an electric stovetop and break out the hot comb straighten
(16:47):
her long, thick hair, and then before she went to bed,
she would have her mom curl or wrap her hair
so would stay up nice, and then she get up
in the morning for more brushing and braiding. Now, as
Um adult, she says, each visit to the salon would
cost me anywhere from sixty to eighty dollars, and she
was making a trip twice a month at some point,
(17:08):
one trip to straighten her hair out and one trip
to deep condition her here so it wouldn't fall out
from all of the chemicals they used on it. And
she said these visits were just maintenance, and this doesn't
account for the times when I got corn rows, when
I wanted trims or cuts, or for special dues for occasion,
But I never had a weave or truly outrageous style
or color. My hair was still the only thing I
spent a lot of money on. So then finally, once
(17:30):
she graduated and was living on her own and had
her own income, she decided to start the process of
locking her hair, which is Um getting dreadlocks. Said the
biggest reason Um I got when I told. The biggest
reaction I got when I told friends and family was
said it was a bad decision because people would think
that I was an anarchist or a dirty hippie, or
that I would constantly be making a political statement with
(17:50):
my hair. Honestly, all these comments irritated me because what
I had learned from a lifetime of taming taming my thick,
wild hair was that took a lot more money and
effort than I was willing and able to put. For
I love my hair, but it's exhausting to keep up with.
I invied my friends who could just roll out of bed,
do some washing and brushing, and leave work in fifteen minutes.
Um So she now has a year and a half later,
(18:13):
she has what they're called teenager dreads that are all
pokey and floppy and go all over the place because
they're still young. I'm not a dirty hippie. I think
I look rather dashing with locks. And while I'm aware
that people politicize my hair, I find it an easy,
inconvenient way to style my hair and I look like
and I like the look on myself. So thank you
so much, Lesia for sending in your perspective on hair. Yes,
(18:37):
some inside into that world, yes, and we always like
to hear inside from you guys, so please send us
an email. It's Mom's stuff at how stuff works dot
com and during the week, if you want to keep
up with me and Molly, you can head over to
our blog. It's called how to Stuff, and you can
also read articles that we are writing as well on
a variety of delightful topics, all of which can be
(18:58):
found at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how staff
works dot com. Want more house staff works? Check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
(19:19):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told You?
From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen, I'm Molly, So Molly. Today we're talking about
(00:23):
bras yes rasiers. So um. I thought a good way
to kick it off would be for us to share
our cup sizes with our audience. I don't think that's
a good idea. It's totally kidding now, there's no way
that would happen. Uh No. But instead of sharing our
own our own braa size is Molly, why don't we
enlighten our listeners with the average bra siyes in America? Okay,
(00:47):
so the average braath size has actually gone up in
the US over the past fifteen years. We have gone
from a nation of thirty four bees on average to
thirty six sees. And it might be because of things
like breast augmentation and the rising of obesity rate. So
(01:07):
it doesn't necessarily mean that we're just all getting a
lot more voluptuous. Well, I guess we are getting more voluptuous,
but not because we're more predisposed bo speaking of big boobs,
do you know what the largest bra size on record is?
Do tell? Crying to the Guinness Book of World Records.
It's a forty eight v V as in Victoria. Those
(01:29):
breastway fifty six pounds when you put them together. That's
another fun fact to want smart contacts. Yes, in a
woman was killed by lightning once when the lightning struck
the underwire and her bra. That is unfortunate. Did you
also know, Molly that, uh, in some cases breasts can
flap against the chest with enough force to break the
(01:52):
clavical Oh my god, probably if you had you know,
the VS you were talking about. I think if I
had VS, I could barely make enough force and moving. Um.
Here's here's a fun fact that Chris and I both like.
Do you know, um, the first sports bra was two
jock straps sewn together and called a job bra. Let's
(02:13):
hope that those were not used shock straps. Um. Did
you know that Triumph International has invented an anti smoking bra,
which admits a mysterious fragrance designed to kill the desire
to spoke? Sounds useful. There are also anti mugging bras
that can monitor heart rate and single the police in
the event of panic. There's also a bras been designed
(02:33):
to detect radiation in case of nuclear attacks. So maybe
you're apocalyptic bra We're ready for it. Bring it on.
I mean, bras are just constantly evolving, so constantly evolving,
and yet holly eight out of ten women supposedly are
wearing the wrong size bra. So even though we have
all of these choices to pick from, all types of
(02:54):
fabrics and cuts and cups, et cetera, we're still just
in the wrong ones. I know it's weird, but you
know what, what is also weird is usually when we
talk about an item of clothing or accessory, be at
high heels or wedding dresses, where we go back through
history and to kind of trace its evolution. And what
was weird to me when we are researching this podcast
is that the bras history is a little bit more
(03:16):
murk here than you would think it would be. Even
the person who they attribute the first bra design too
is somewhat contentious, but we could say we can't say
with certainty that the first patent for a breast supporter
was granted um in the mid eighteen hundreds. Too, man
named Lumen L. Chapman of Camden, New Jersey. But don't
(03:38):
just think that this is some male invention. About half
the patents that have been awarded for things related to
bras have been awarded to women. So this is kind
of this uh piece of architecture. It's so frequently referred
to as a bridge when you're reading about bra design
that has been constantly updated and changed by women. Yeah.
For instance, in eighteen nine, we have a woman named
(04:01):
Marie two Sick of New York City who patented a
breast supporter, which was basically the precursor to an underwire bra.
So no one person really gets credit for the invention
of the brawl. They kind of painted as this natural
evolution From course, it's um, you know, supporting the breasts
from below while cutting off all of your oxygen to
supporting the breast from above by using shoulder straps and
(04:24):
hopefully giving you a little bit more room to move. Yeah.
Because one of the reasons why bras came into vogue
is because they simply fit better with the fashions of
the day. For instance, with flapper style, bras became a
lot more popular because at the time they were used
to sort of squash down the breast because the flapper
(04:45):
dresses were very low cut, and so it was actually
seen as a little more of a modest covering than
a corset that would kind of serve as a more
of a boostier. Yeah, early early designs just completely flattened
and don't lift and shape the way our aimed wonder
brawls do now. But over the years I was reading
the things that have been um used for bras include wire, cork, rubber,
(05:09):
sheet metal or cardboard covered with silk, and some rubber
breastpads made of horsehair, elk hair, and antelope hair. I mean,
these are these things have a weird history. Now. The
word brazier first shows up in Vogue in a Vogue
magazine ad in October of nineteen o seven. Um, and
(05:30):
the term brazier comes from an old French word that
means arm protector and it refers to part of a
military uniform. And then the word later became used for
a military breastplate, and then for a type of woman's corset,
and then um supposedly in the nineteen thirties, college students
were the ones to shorten brazier to our slang bra.
(05:52):
So that's why when I got dressed this morning, I
was like, I'm putting on my arm protector and going
to war. Um, we want to talk about maiden form. Yes,
they're very iconic when it comes to bras. And what
I thought was pretty cool is that there was this
dress shop called Enid Frocks, delightful little name. It was
owned by Enich Bassett and in Enid and her seamstress
(06:12):
were like, you know, our dresses would be even more
awesome if we had different kinds of undergarments that women
can put on with them. So they made bras and
they would give them away when you bought a dress.
And these were bando style bras that they were making,
and they gradually picked up became so popular they stopped
giving them away with dresses. And then about a decade
(06:33):
after Ida and Enid started making their bando style bras,
a manufacturer S. H. Camp and Company first match breast
sizes to the A through D cups that we have
now and that was in three interesting. So as the
years go on, we have all sorts of um new design, summer, sexy,
summer modest. You know, bras really can't decide what they
(06:55):
want to be. Victoria's secret comes along, and it was
designed to help a man feel comfortable when he is
out shopping for the bra because it was so European. Yeah,
the first Victoria's Secret opened in in nine and you know,
the Wonder Bra was the big sensation in the mid nineties.
Probably our last big bra moment as a universe was
when the Wonder bral came along and instead of um
(07:17):
lifting and separating, it lifted and pushed, giving the woman
a cleavage. You know, there's something that I did not
realize Molly about bras is that there too main types
of ways of bras are designed. There. Either design is
encapsulation bras or compression bras, and encapsulation bras are basically
(07:38):
two separately large molded cups that completely contain the breast,
whereas compression bras squash our boobs against our bodies to
reduce the amount of weight that the that the bra
really has to support. Yeah, and so then the question
becomes which brad do I need? And if you're asking
(07:58):
that question, you're sort of like, well, I am I
even wearing a bra in the first place, because you know,
we think about corsets like that was just that's just
kind of ridiculous. That was just to have an arbitrarily
really skinny waist. Yeah, And as actress Marlowe Thomas said
on her show that girl, God created women to bounce.
I don't know if I entirely agree with Maho Thomas,
but that was in the in the seventies when when
(08:19):
ladies were getting a little looser with their with their
brazil when they were allegedly burning bras, which, as we
debunked in our Feminist podcast, bras were never burned. Yeah,
but they are because they essentially, you know, when you
think about maiden form, they came about because they wanted
to look good under clothing, to present the breast better
under clothing. Are they are they just you know, superficial?
(08:42):
Were they a good symbol to burn because they were
just making women look like men wanted them to look
right because the purpose, one of the main purposes of
the corset was to exaggerate the female shape, to create
this kind of overly feminine um body form for women
as a as a way to kind of set them
(09:03):
apart from from men. Uh So, the question is by extension,
does that mean that we are still holding up just
reinforcing old archaic gender norms by wearing bras, which are
still just presenting our breasts in more aesthetically fleasing ways.
And it turns out is it is largely aesthetic. I
was reading and I was really shocked. Maybe everyone else
(09:25):
knows this but me. But bras. But bras do not
prevent breast from sagging. Yeah, they do not. Uh, they
don't fight the good fight against gravity. If you wear
a bra your whole life thinking you're protecting things, you
are not. They're gonna sack. They're gonna sack, just gonna happen.
But if you do feel more comfortable on a bra,
then that is really the only purpose of abroad that
(09:48):
can be found. But there have been a lot of
interesting studies about how our boobs move around because there
is one thing, um that bras you do, and that's
with sports bras specifically, they do keep our our breasts
from jiggling around because for some women who have very
large breasts, that can be really painful, and simply having
that extra support you can to help out the load
(10:11):
that their their back would be bearing it wise, Yeah,
tons women don't exercise because they can't find a good
bra that fits theman. In fact, very little was known
up until recently about how breasts moved when a woman
exercise like that sounds silly because you can look at
a woman bouncing around and think, hey, she bounces. But
people used to think that you just bounced up and down.
(10:32):
Not so, not so. Not until Julie Steel came along
and put all these light emitting diodes on women and
then tracked the movement of those lights as they ran,
did we know how breasts really moved? Breasts actually moved
in a signed new soidl like a figure eight pattern,
which I found very surprising because, like you said, I
(10:53):
thought that there was just a bunch of up and
down jiggling and small breasts. In fact, Molly can move
more than three inches vertically during a jog, and that's
just small breast. Christian. Iously, the larger they are, the
more momentum that's going to be generated. That is Newton's
second law and action. The next time you're in physics
class and need to explain Newton to your classmates, use
(11:15):
breasts as an example. Yeah, you can just personalize it
with a jog in place. You have to cause a
really awkward silence. Yeah, let us know how that works out.
For you. Um, but if you wear a sports pra though,
it can reduce studies studies, Yes, people have studied this. Uh.
Studies have shown that sports bras will reduce that movement
by in a cup women and up to fifty five
(11:39):
for G cup women. Right, But don't not exercise because
you think that your breast will sack as a result
of all that running. You know, just because you're bouncing.
It does not that's not really a factor in the sagging. Yeah.
There is a medical term for breast stagging, which is
called breast potosis. But unfortunately, uh for some braws or
not the cure for potosis. Yeah, it's kind of depressing.
(12:03):
I'm not gonna lie. Now, what about Molly. There is
one kind of strange mythods out there about the possible
harms of wearing a bra. Some people have said that
bra wearing underweire braws make it more likely for YouTube
developed breast cancer. Yeah, there was this study that was
done by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Gris Miser probably
(12:24):
didn't pronounce that correctly, and they did. The study made
a lot of news lit of headlines that said that
women who wore a bra twenty four hours a day
had a one thirteen fold increase in breast cancer incidents
compared to women who wore a bra for less than
twelve hours a day. And so what they suggested is
that the bras put enough pressure on the breast and
the surrounding areas that um, your lymph nodes would cause
(12:46):
like toxic material would build up in there instead of
getting flushed out naturally, and so it kept all this
toxin in and it uh increased risk for breast cancer.
But what they did when they did the studies, they
didn't examine any other risk factors for breast cancer, and
so a big risk factor for breast cancers obesity. So
(13:07):
obese women with really big boobs probably are wearing bras
more often than those who aren't. So it's not necessarily
that it was not necessarily because of the bra, but
perhaps because of obesity. And speaking of um obesity, that
is one one way that wearing a bra, Wearing the
wrong bra, especially um can cause um pain, especially women
(13:29):
who who are larger, because if they're if their straps
don't fit correctly, they're going to dig into um the
muscles in the back and trigger the nerves that run
all the way down your arm and even cause numbness
in your little fingers. So there can be health detriments
to wearing a bra. So that's why it's so important
to get a correctly sized bra. But there aren't as
(13:53):
many health benefits unless a bra helps you exercise. And
now here's a fun just as a way to wrap
it up, a fun way that bras can hurt your
male or female counterpart. Actually not really females, because they
probably know how to work abra. But according to the
Daily Mail, young men have such a poor understanding of
the opening and closing of bras that they risk injury.
(14:14):
What injury, finger injuries the kind that you could probably
get like when you were rock climbing, fractures and ligament damage.
And so they did the study to show just how
at risk men are for this because they don't know
how to work for bras. In one test, it took
men an average of twenty seven seconds to remove a
braw using both hands. Right handed men using their left
hand took in an average of fifty eight seconds. Well,
(14:36):
one unfortunate volunteer took a passion killing twenty minutes, according
to the Daily Mail. Wow, So minutes to avoid finger injury.
For your fella, teach him how to take off the bra, yeah,
or just go brawl? IS's molly about that? Apparently we
haven't talked about why don't we just when we just
let them let I'm hanging free. And that's how we
(14:58):
learned from research, is if you're comfortable that way, there's
no medical reason to put on a bra. The whole
reason we wear them is because we've been taught by
a society wear them, and now it's hard to imagine
life without them. Yeah, I mean, I certainly can't go
brothers at this point, not because of size, I guess,
but just because it feels weird not to have one on.
Speak for yourself, Molly, starting a revolution, you're gonna go,
(15:21):
You're gonna join. I don't know, we'll see it does get,
if anything? In the winter, it just just a little
insulation against the cold. Yes, that's true. So probably for
the winter months, we'll keep these puppies indoors, all right,
the listeners, it's up to you to tell us. Do
your puppies stay indoors like Kristian's or do they run
(15:41):
free and wild like wild dogs like Marlo Thomas is yeah.
I mean, are you guys bouncers? Are are you compressors?
We want to know all about bras you like and
that you don't like, and I want that selfishly. It's recommendations.
What I'm asking for, ladies, its recommendations. And Molly, let's
not forget another men too. BRA's effect men and women alike,
(16:03):
as Seinfeld notably demonstrated, men can wear bras. The bro
all right, Molly, well it is time for a little
bit of listener mail and I have a very um
nowice email here, uh from Lesia and she said, I've
never really given much thought to my hair until I
got to college. I'm a black Woman's in my hair,
while playing a central role in my life, was never
really my responsibility. As a child, I remember having to
(16:25):
get up early with my mother on school days, sitting
in her lap while she brushed and braid my hair
for the day before driving me to school. She also
remembers it took hours her wash her hair in the morning, um,
and she would wash she v while her mom combed
and dried her hair for thirty minutes and then oiled
her scout for fifteen to thirty minutes, and then they
would go to the kitchen where her mom would use
an electric stovetop and break out the hot comb straighten
(16:47):
her long, thick hair, and then before she went to bed,
she would have her mom curl or wrap her hair
so would stay up nice, and then she get up
in the morning for more brushing and braiding. Now, as
Um adult, she says, each visit to the salon would
cost me anywhere from sixty to eighty dollars, and she
was making a trip twice a month at some point,
(17:08):
one trip to straighten her hair out and one trip
to deep condition her here so it wouldn't fall out
from all of the chemicals they used on it. And
she said these visits were just maintenance, and this doesn't
account for the times when I got corn rows, when
I wanted trims or cuts, or for special dues for occasion,
But I never had a weave or truly outrageous style
or color. My hair was still the only thing I
spent a lot of money on. So then finally, once
(17:30):
she graduated and was living on her own and had
her own income, she decided to start the process of
locking her hair, which is Um getting dreadlocks. Said the
biggest reason Um I got when I told. The biggest
reaction I got when I told friends and family was
said it was a bad decision because people would think
that I was an anarchist or a dirty hippie, or
that I would constantly be making a political statement with
(17:50):
my hair. Honestly, all these comments irritated me because what
I had learned from a lifetime of taming taming my thick,
wild hair was that took a lot more money and
effort than I was willing and able to put. For
I love my hair, but it's exhausting to keep up with.
I invied my friends who could just roll out of bed,
do some washing and brushing, and leave work in fifteen minutes.
Um So she now has a year and a half later,
(18:13):
she has what they're called teenager dreads that are all
pokey and floppy and go all over the place because
they're still young. I'm not a dirty hippie. I think
I look rather dashing with locks. And while I'm aware
that people politicize my hair, I find it an easy,
inconvenient way to style my hair and I look like
and I like the look on myself. So thank you
so much, Lesia for sending in your perspective on hair. Yes,
(18:37):
some inside into that world, yes, and we always like
to hear inside from you guys, so please send us
an email. It's Mom's stuff at how stuff works dot
com and during the week, if you want to keep
up with me and Molly, you can head over to
our blog. It's called how to Stuff, and you can
also read articles that we are writing as well on
a variety of delightful topics, all of which can be
(18:58):
found at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how staff
works dot com. Want more house staff works? Check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
(19:19):
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