The Bralette
aka Additional Reasons I Drink
Y’all, let’s unpack the bralette. Let’s take it out of our drawers and suitcases and lay it on the bed and discuss the lies that have been dealt to our eager bodies around this swatch of cloth. Let’s get into half-truths and shenanigans, because the bralette is how they get us, in the end. This is how they win.
Here’s an article by Slate that gives some helpful information re the bralette:
An important distinction in this discussion is that the bralette is not the same as a wireless bra. They want you to think these two starkly different items are the same. It’s a lie. I’m a size 34DDD (I forget which alternate letter that is. F? My bra GPA is the percentage equivalent of fat in soy milk) and I attend Fuck Underwire Camp every time I am forced to wear clothes. I’d sooner tape myself to a hungry Chihuahua than wear a bra with underwire. While bralettes do not have underwire, they cannot be lumped into the same category as the wireless bra because their function is not the same. A wireless bra provides support and stability. A bralette is decorative. Ornamental. Side note: sometimes, wireless bras will be called sports bras. It’s a little misleading, considering most sports bras will give you uniboob and straps bigger than the ones rich folks keep telling you to find so you can stop being poor. I don’t get mad about it though because there are sports bras that don’t cater to these issues, and I can write the shitty ones off as bad designs. Anyways, back to the crux, which is that wireless bras provide support and stability, and bralettes are decorative.
Here’s the thing. There are folks who will then wonder why we can’t have both. Ugh why is everything so binary, they ask. So either/or. (I should know, because I was one of them.)
You want a wireless bra that has lace and silk and funky straps and cleavage and still keeps your boobs from punching you in the face every time you do anything, then for sure. Wireless bras like this exist.
But they aren’t bralettes.
They are still wireless bras. Because here is what bralettes mean when they tout decorative: they mean easy. They mean, ‘here is what you get to wear when your boobs are so perky they only wobble the teeniest bit and that’s only when you’re training for the Boston Marathon whilst snatching yoga poses twenty feet above your Jillian recommended trampoline.’ They mean, ‘here is what you wear if you want to be sultry and spontaneous and casually sexy and flippant and feminine in the way that boobs are if they never cause a ruckus’. They mean, ‘here is something to put on when you want to be reminded of your femininity.’
They mean, ‘here is what I wear when I want to be the paradigm of feminine.’
And the wireless bra with ornamentation means none of those things. The wireless bra helps you feel put together. It wants you to be focused on shit other than your rowdy knockers, unless your rowdy knockers are where you want to be. It wants you to stand strong against whatever Daniel jumps up there to tell you you seem too eager. It wants you to have sexiness that honors your comfort, your movement, your choices. It wants you to feel coy and sultry and carefree without the lie that is a loose shoulder strap, or the façade that is your entire life when you pretend maybe this bralette is comfortable nestled in between your boobs like a fuckforsaken twizzler that no one wants because they taste like cardboard and the gluten in there is just the last goddamn straw. The wireless bra says ‘sore boobs suck; how about you walk around without that nonsense’. The wireless bra says ‘have your lace and eat it, too. Fuck kale.’ The wireless bra says, ‘and extra fuck a flimsy chest thong midway through lunch because Daniel likes low maintenance Debra in design anyways.’
Debra, who, by the fucking way, spent two hours deciding if she would eat a bag of pretzels and then mocked you for putting bleu cheese on a salad.
It enrages me that we see the bralette and the wireless bra as two options that exist in realms of conflicting needs. It infuriates me that folks who look for wireless bras that are also sexy might buy a wireless bra that is advertised as a bralette because some Debra in design decided THEY WANT TO BE LIKE MEEEEE and then poof here we are thinking lookit my carefree bralette whilst Debra gets sad sex with Daniel and a promotion to lead designer, and the rest of everyone are out here getting told we try too hard. It makes me livid that what counts as desirable is encompassed in something as utterly useless as the fuckladen grundle booger of cloth hopefully referred to as a ‘bralette’.
And what’s wrong with wearing something frivolous just because it makes you feel sexy, you might ask.
Not a damn thing. Fuckall is wrong with clothing that is purely ornamental. But ask yourself why this particular piece of clothing is juxtaposed the way it is. Why, if it’s neutrally sexy, if it’s sexy without any agenda, does it cater to a certain size? Why does it feel so good to be able to wear one? What is it about being uncomplicated (if something with five extra equally useless straps and seven pounds of lace can still be considered uncomplicated) that makes us feel more desirable? Desirable to whom?
We can have appreciation that doesn’t link to a lacy piece of shit clinging to your disinterested nipples. We could coo over bras that can be worn like twelve different ways by folks of every size. Get excited about the shoulder underneath the strap, the roundness of the edges, the soft shadow of the collarbone as it wanders towards our neck. Be turned on because we are revealing ourselves when we remove clothing and when Not-Daniel sees our bra, he is seeing it because we trust him. We can crave men who are turned on because when we strip, we are showing them who we are, rather than who they want.
It’s pretty clear that that’s how they get us, right? This literal fuck puddle of a boob sack is how they divide us. We can’t let them win. Fuck that bralette. Fuck the paradigm of femininity for which it insists is worth eating the leathered turds some Debra (probably it was Daniel) decided to call kale. And don’t even get me fucking started on the shelf bra. Pass the wine.
