Since ancient times, women have covered and supported their breasts in a variety of ways, mostly for function and not fashion. Around the 16th century, women began wearing corsets for breast support and to shape their torso. Corsets were difficult to put on and take off, were restrictive with breathing and movement and often bulky. A French company in the 19th century used the word “brassiere” for its whale bone supported camisoles and in 1911 the word made its way in the Oxford English Dictionary.
In 1914, Mary Phelps Jacob used 2 handkerchiefs tied at the back, to fit herself in a gown that was sheer and sleek and the bulky camisole was just not working out underneath. She then made similar contraptions for her friends, who all loved the freedom of movement it provided as compared to corsets and stiff camisoles. In 1914, she got a patent for it through United States Patent and Trademark office. In 1932, SH Camp and Company came up with the system of relating breast size to a bra cup by using an alphabetic letter, a system that is still in use.
Bras keep the breasts supported/lifted, smooth out the anatomy of the breast, separates them providing better shape, and may make women feel less exposed under a sleek or sheer shirt. In bigger bust women, bras improve posture and reduce backache. Bras have come a long way, however every woman is unique and so are her breasts. Developing lingerie that fits them well is a unique challenge and is a multimillion-dollar industry now.
Bras are basically divided into two broad categories – Underwired and Wire-free bras. Additionally, there are multiple different kinds under each of these broad categories.
Lets look at the pros and cons of Underwire and Wire-free bras.
Underwired Bras:
Pros: Underwired bras are generally better suited for bigger bust women and provides them with a better shape and support that they need. Underwired bras are also considered better for sports and physical activities.
Cons: Underwired bras can be uncomfortable and painful. They are difficult to use in case of surgical/nonsurgical scars on chest walls, and in pregnant and nursing moms. They are not intended to be worn to bed.
Wire-Free Bras:
Pros: Wire-Free bras are generally considered better suited for smaller bust women. They are good in case of painful scars on chest wall and are overall more comfy and less restrictive.
Cons: Wire-Free bras, can affect shape, do not provide the necessary support for bigger busted women and are generally not well suited for sports and physical activities.
Controversies:
There is an ongoing debate about the effect of wires or no wires on breast health. Underwire bras can potentially prevent drainage of lymphatic fluid from surrounding lymph nodes, raising the question of toxins accumulating in breast tissue and contributing to higher cancer risk. Underwire bras can also cause overstimulation of reflex points under the breasts (which correlate to liver, gallbladder and stomach) but how it affects those organs is not precisely known.
Choose what fits your breasts best and keep you comfortable and above all breathing!
Which one is right for you?
Having outlined some of the pros and cons for both wired and wire-free bras and the controversies surrounding underwire bras, there are plenty of options for all women. The determining factor does boil down to the perfect or close to perfect fit. Either kind can be uncomfortable when the fit is not right and both can be really comfy when fit is right for your body and shape. Our weights and shapes fluctuate and that affect bra fit. When your bra feels uncomfortable, whether it’s wired or wire-free, that’s the time to visit a good lingerie store and get yourself measured which can be twice a year to more depending on size and shape fluctuations. When you purchase a new bra, it is best to get a fitting, as every brand will fit differently.
These days many varieties of wire-free bra options are available that provide excellent support for sports or have silicone wires that give proper shape and support to bigger bust women. However they don’t always work for rigorous physical activity in well-endowed women. Your choice then should be a wired bra but with the best fit to keep you comfy and breathing.
What if you can’t make up your mind? Well there is something called a partial wire bra! Many camisoles with built in bras have wires that don’t extend throughout the entire cup length but still provide support, lift and shape the breasts.
Remember my last article on Voicebowl (http://voicebowl.com/how-healthy-is-healthy/) – healthy lifestyle is all about moderation. So is breast health. Its ideal to go back and forth between wired and wire-free for different work-play-rest needs. Support your breast with well fitted comfortable underwire bras for active times of the day and let them rest in a bralette when visiting a friend. Take your bra off at bedtime – wearing a bra to bed can potentially slow down blood and lymphatic drainage and promote breast swelling, consequences of which are controversial but why take a chance when it doesn’t hurt to take it off!
Spend some well-deserved time when it comes to choosing a bra type– focus on comfort and fit. Choose what fits your breasts best and keep you comfortable and above all breathing!
You don’t have to give in to the social pressure of an unnaturally full, perked up, revealing cleavage that the commercialized society pushes on women – remember beauty is inner and has no standards. Be yourself!
7 thoughts on “Underwired vs. Wire-Free Bras – The Good, Bad And The Ugly!”
Hi Dr. Shaheen. I am a medical anthropologist breast cancer researcher and co-author of Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras.
You assume that women need bras, when they don’t, regardless of size. Breasts were not designed by nature to need 20th Century lingerie for “support”. Actually, the purpose of bras is to create artificially-shaped breasts, and to do this the bra applies constant pressure to the breasts, which interferes with lymphatic circulation. This causes chronic, mild lymphedema of the breasts, which many women experience as breast pain and cysts. Toxins accumulate in the breasts due to lymph stasis, and immune function is impaired since the lymphatics are the circulatory pathway of the immune system. Over time, this can lead to cancer.
Underwire bras are extremely tight and constrictive. Large-breasted women should not be advised to wear them. Note, as well, how large-breasted women have deep shoulder grooves from bras, which can compress nerves going down the arms and cause numbness and tingling in the fingers. The compression of the bra strap on the shoulders also causes back ache, neck pain, headaches, and poor posture. Many tumors are found along the line of compression of the underwire.
Bras also cause breasts to become reliant on the external support, making the breasts droopy as the natural suspensory ligaments in the breasts weaken and atrophy from nonuse. Studies have also shown that women move and breathe easier without a bra, and a study on athletic women showed that they preferred being bra-free once they became used to being so, as nature intended.
When women stop wearing bras they report that their breast pain and cysts go away, and their breasts lift and tone. They also say their self-esteem improves when they no longer feel it necessary to have artificially-shaped breasts and are free to be natural.
Bras are also the leading cause of breast cancer. Bra-free women have about the same risk of breast cancer as men, while the tighter and longer the bra is worn the higher the risk rises, to over 100 times higher for a 24/7 bra user compared to a bra-free woman. Numerous studies done internationally show a bra-cancer link. (See below for some studies.)
I believe it is important for women to realize that constrictive clothing of any kind is hazardous to health, since it interferes with circulation, particularly lymphatic circulation. If any garment leaves red marks or indentations in the skin, then it is too tight. By the way, over 90% of women wear bras too tightly, even according to lingerie manufacturers. Of course, even fitted bras are tight, since all bras need to be tight to do their job of altering breast shape.
It is unfortunate that despite the research support for the bra-cancer link, mainstream medical interests have dismissed this issue as a “myth”. Part of the problem is that all breast cancer research that has ignored the bra as a variable is flawed, like ignoring smoking when researching lung cancer (which was the case for 30 years). Cultural practices that are entrenched in the economy are hard to challenge, especially given the amount of money at stake for the lingerie industry and the cancer detection and treatment industry. And the bra industry has suspected underwire bras cause cancer for many decades now. The industry is taking the position of blaming women for wearing bras too tightly, hoping to avoid liability.
I hope this brief note has helped. I would be happy to discuss this further with you if you contact me. Here are a few studies that show bras cause cancer. There are hyperlinks to these studies on my website http://www.BrasAndBreastCancer.org.
1991 Harvard study (CC Hsieh, D Trichopoulos (1991). Breast size, handedness and breast cancer risk. European Journal of Cancer and Clinical Oncology 27(2):131-135.). This study found that, “Premenopausal women who do not wear bras had half the risk of breast cancer compared with bra users…”
1991-93 U.S. Bra and Breast Cancer Study by Singer and Grismaijer, published in Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras (Second Edition, Square One Publishers, 2018). Found that bra-free women have about the same incidence of breast cancer as men. 24/7 bra wearing increases incidence over 100 times that of a bra-free woman.
Singer and Grismaijer did a follow-up study in Fiji, published in Get It Off! (ISCD Press, 2000). Found 24 case histories of breast cancer in a culture where half the women are bra-free. The women getting breast cancer were all wearing bras. Given women with the same genetics and diet and living in the same village, the ones getting breast disease were the ones wearing bras for work.
A 2009 Chinese study (Zhang AQ, Xia JH, Wang Q, Li WP, Xu J, Chen ZY, Yang JM (2009). [Risk factors of breast cancer in women in Guangdong and the countermeasures]. In Chinese. Nan Fang Yi Ke Da Xue Xue Bao. 2009 Jul;29(7):1451-3.) found that NOT sleeping in a bra was protective against breast cancer, lowering the risk 60%.
2015 Comparative study of breast cancer risk factors at Kenyatta National Hospital and the Nairobi Hospital J. Afr. Cancer (2015) 7:41-46. This study found a significant bra-cancer link in pre-and post-menopausal women.
2016 Wearing a Tight Bra for Many Hours a Day is Associated with Increased Risk of Breast Cancer Adv Oncol Res Treat 1: 105. This is the first epidemiological study to look at bra tightness and time worn, and found a significant bra-cancer link.
2016 Brassiere wearing and breast cancer risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis World J Meta-Anal. Aug 26, 2015; 3(4): 193-205 “This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the association between 8 areas of brassiere-wearing practices and the risk of breast cancer. Twelve case-control studies met inclusion criteria for review. … the meta-analysis shows statistically significant findings to support the association between brassiere wearing during sleep and breast cancer risk…”
2017 Surgical damage to the lymphatic system promotes tumor growth via impaired adaptive immune response Journal of Dermatological Science April 2018Volume 90, Issue 1, Pages 46–51 “These results strongly indicate that surgical damage of the lymphatic system may promote tumor progression via impaired adaptive immune response.”
2018 Lymph stasis promotes tumor growth Journal of Dermatological Science “(t)hese findings come as no surprise to us who for a long time have been aware that alterations in regional lymphatic flow may produce dysregulation in skin immune function and consequent oncogenesis. In fact, since 2002, our team has held the view that lymphedematous areas are immunologically vulnerable sites for the development of neoplasms as well as infections and immune-mediated diseases. In recent years, increasing evidence has confirmed this assumption.”
By the way, the bra-cancer link is not new. For example, Dr. John Mayo, one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic, wrote in the article “Susceptibility to Cancer” in the 1931 Annals of Surgery, that “Cancer of the breast occurs largely among civilized women. In those countries where breasts are allowed to be exposed, that is, are not compressed or irritated by clothing, it is rare.” A bra patent in 1950 stated, “Even in the proper breast size, most brassieres envelop or bind the breast in such a fashion that normal circulation and freedom of movement is constricted. Many cases of breast cancer have been attributed to such breast constriction as caused by improperly fitted brassieres.” (Taken from the 2018 edition of Dressed to Kill.)
Cheers,
Sydney Ross Singer
Medical Anthropologist
Director, Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease
Hello Ms. Singer,
Thanks so much for taking the time to reflect and share your voice on Voicebowl! As you have studied and stated, this controversy is not new and has been going on for many years now. There are indeed research and articles in support of both views. I have only used research and practices that are evidence based, not anecdotes or speculations/opinions. There is always the argument that women who wear bras are also more informed and in tuned to getting medical care, hence cancer detection is higher in them compared to those who don’t. Also men is born naked, why cover? but we do and consider it quite normal. Covering/supporting the breast is not much different then, many argue.
Its unlikely that we will settle this argument on Voicebowl 🙂 However this discussion is crucial and meaningful. Thanks for voicing!
I have used this company called Decent Exposures, every once in a while to get custom made organic cotton bras, They do a good job and their customer service is excellent as well.
https://decentexposures.com/Bras
I’ve never heard of organic cotton bras. Amazing concept. Would love for you to do a post on it!
Will do SAJ 🙂
How important is it to use a cotton-lined bra (which are almost impossible to find nowadays)?
Cotton is the most inert of materials and gentle to the skin. Cotton lined bras are hard to find but if you can find one with a good fit – they definitely are a great choice. If not, you can use non cotton lined bras and give your skin a break when you are home 😀