To Wear or Not To Wear The Cups Under The T-Shirt

Women often judged by their appearance. You may hear people say, "Wow, you're so slim!" or "You look chubbier."

sumber: instagram.com/indonesiafeminis/

The research from a sociologist in Poland says that women and men agree that their appearance affected their social function, but women are more aware of that on various aspects of life they're judged by their appearance than men. It seems people could not stand to not comments on women's physical appearance. This is a pervasive situation that happened like the usual situation in our everyday life.

Women not only encountered that situation on daily basis but also on another big event too, such as big sports event. Reports from Cambridge says that, 

"In reporting and discussion of women's sport, there is often criticism for a heavy focus on the aesthetic rather than athleticism, or the sporting performance itself. We see evidence of this in the Sports Corpus, where we find women collocating with clad, as in scantily clad, and we also see a collocation with the verb dress." (p. 8)

Yup, women often commented on their appearance even in a big sports event! Can you imagine? Instead of focusing on the sports itself, such as the athlete's performance or another achievement on those sports, they (I don't know this referred to whom) focus on the women's athlete appearance.

In a sports event, they talked about what the women's athlete wears. How could it be possible?

A study by Heflick and Goldenberg (2009) supported those situations. It says, "... that focusing on a woman's appearance lead individuals to reduce the perception of her competence."

People don't care about woman's competence because appearance is one thing that says it all.

Even on 2009, Forbes wrote that "Your looks can help--or hinder--your chances of getting a well-deserved promotion, regardless of qualifications, especially in a sour economy when advancements are few and hard to come by." You read that right. In terms to get a promotion, you have to step up your appearance unless you will not get the promotions. A study from Cornell University says that a white woman who gained 64 pounds will experience a wage-drop by 9%. In another study, says that obesity also "could lower the annual earnings by as much as 6.2% and a man's by as much as 2.3%."

Appearance. Appearance. Appearance.

No wonder women feel insecure and not confident of her appearance and wanted to change themselves into the "standard" look.

Not only we (read: women) judged by how our appearance, we also have to obey the "rules" that people assigned to us. One of them is: we have to wear a bra.

Yup, "the bra" is the popular topic around the globe. And it seems that "If you're not wearing a bra, you distracted others and that violates the law," is bigger than the core problem itself: Is bra good for our health?

Back to 2018, you may hear or read the story about a 17-year-old girl who's not wearing a bra to school that ended up in "the dean's office because that nipples and breasts were distracting other students and therefore she was violating school dress code policy."

The school even make her put a second shirt and gave her 4 band-aids to cover her nipples, two band-aids for each breast. Not only that, she says that the school had her, " ... stand up and, like, move and jump around to see how much my breasts moved."

I am honestly speechless.

If that so, men should also pass the test of "how much his breasts move" and "how much his nipples could be seen through the t-shirt."

People tend to only look at wearing a bra as an obligation without even look at what or how the story behind it.

In fact, one of the articles at Refinery29 says that the ill-fitting bra is one of the reasons that caused breast pain. Even though it is harmless, it still causes you pain. That being said, to find and use the right size-fitting bra is very important. However, we never got taught how to get the right size-fit bra. We only got told to wear it.

I also found another arcticle, from a study that interviewed almost 4000 women says that nearly all of them wore a bra just for the appearance sake. It means, they never really want to wear one, they only wear because they "have" to wear it in terms of pleased other's eye.

Not only that, a study from 2005 (explained in the dissertation by Liang) found that "women who do not wear bras have a dramatically reduced rate of breast cancer." Even though until now there's still no strong proof of wearing a bra and breast cancer, BUT, the pressure that the breast tissue had may cause "poor lymphatic drainage, and failure to breastfeed, whilst, resultant bruising of the breasts may increase cancer risk." (p.26)

To make things worse, Amoozegar-Montero and Ramirez stated that at least 70% of women wear the ill-fitting bra size (p. 1).

See how the relation of bra and women's breasts not only about "the nipples were distracting" but way more than that.

I said before (and apparently a bunch of studies said it) that wearing a properly fitted bra is so important because it could help increase self-confidence and alter negative body perception. But, if we're not, it can result in breast health problems (p. 30).

For now, I believe a lot of study and research still try to find the technology and the methodology to measure the breasts appropriately so women could have the properly fitting bra. It's just the society that always stuck by the unseen law that only sees this situation from one side.

To wear or not to wear a bra it should be a personal choice. If you don't really feel it today to wear a bra, then don't wear it. If you want to wear it, you feel comfortable, you feel confidence, then go for it. You made the decisions, not others.

For those of you who often question, why won't or don't you wear a bra? Let's reverse the question:
why should we?

Goldenberg (2009) demonstrated that focusing on a woman’s appearance lead

individuals to reduce the perception of her competence