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Training Bras

© Regina Sewell

I don't think I will ever forget the day that Mom bought me my first bra. I was 11 and we went to a girls' specialty clothing store. We were waited on by an impatient elderly woman who poked me with her nails as she measured my chest and helped my try on various restraints. My chest was flat as a pancake, and having someone poke and prod it was humiliating. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to run out of that store empty handed and pretend like that shopping trip never happened. Though I tried to talk Mom out of buying anything, we walked out of the store with two training bras. It was the first day of the rest of a life that I did not want to live.

I thought that the whole idea of training bras was absurd. It's not like most mothers want their children to be able to do tricks with their breasts. Those are skills reserved for the breasts of erotic dancers and porn stars. Lacking substantial flesh to support, training bras don't do much besides itch.

While I hated my training bras (and by extension, my mother for buying them), my friends, oddly enough, thought of their training bras as something akin to badges of honor. Several friends even swore that they wore theirs to bed to enhance the "growth potential" that they offered. It didn't take me long to realize that in order to be "part of the crowd," I would have to wear mine, too. I felt like I was selling my soul for social acceptance. Unfortunately, the acceptance of the girls effectively cut me off from boys. Before the training bras, I was able to travel easily between the world of boys and the world of girls and counted a number of boys among my friends. After training bras, boys became enemies who harassed me, made fun of my female body and popped my bra.

What I know now is that the bras were merely the physical embodiment of the change in expectations for adolescent girls. Literature on adolescent socialization as well as anecdotes from women in the self defense classes that I teach indicate that for the most part, pre-adolescent girls feel a sense of power in the world, are at least somewhat comfortable taking risks, and don't question having ambitions of power. The rules of womanhood crush these ambitions and squelch any resistance to the rules by imposing a fierce system of peer pressure. Preadolescent freedom is replaced by a set of rules putting girls in a double bind: wear make up, but not too much; express appropriate emotions (joy, sadness) but don't be too emotional (and never show anger); don't be too quiet or too loud; be interested in boys, but not too interested; be thin, but not too thin. In short, don't stand out. From now on, any aspiration is secondary to being female in its most narrow scope. Even those who continue their ambitions are labeled female first: girl basketball players instead of basketball players, women scientists rather than scientists, etc.