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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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During covid, a lot of people who started working from home started dressing more casually. I am a C or a D cup, depending on brand, and have been since I was 12. If I'm working out, hiking, or doing physical work, I generally prefer to wear a sports bra just to keep my breasts in check. Otherwise, I'm perfectly content not wearing a bra. So during covid, I pretty much stopped wearing a bra. That meant if I needed to run to the grocery store for something, I went without a bra. I'm not my mom. I'm not going to change out of my jeans into something "appropriate" for outsiders, put on some hose, and do my hair and face to go to the store. I wasn't raised in the 50s. I'm comfortable slipping on some sneakers, running a brush through my hair, and going to get some lettuce. How much effort should I expend on this? Are my nipples truly that distracting in the produce aisle? I've given birth and nursed a baby. You can see my nipples. Even when I wear a bra - form-shaping underwire or breast-squooshing sports bra - you can see my nipples.

I'm old, so when I go into the office, or otherwise need to be observed to be professional, I'll throw on a bra. But on my own time? Forget it. In my lifetime we've stopped requiring hose if our ankles might show and (mostly?) stopped requiring shoes that deform and mutilate feet. I'm all for tossing out bras as a required undergarment. FWIW, my understanding is bras at best can contribute to comfort (see my comment about physical activity) and at worst can actually be harmful. From my perspective, they're usually uncomfortable, challenging to size properly, expensive, require special laundering, and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!" Observing my college-aged daughter's peers, they seem to be treating bras much like I treated hose at their age (old people expect us to use them, so we will when we think we should care about old people, but otherwise hose/bras are dumb and we're not going to bother unless we want to for a particular reason).

Is not wearing a tie lazy? And I think the undershirt is another lost garment. Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Is not wearing a tie lazy? And I think the undershirt is another lost garment. Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Yes, men should put in the effort to dress properly, and I'm 100% willing to be judgemental about it- but it's mostly a decline in formality, not modesty. Skinny jeans are a marginal phenomenon.

I think there's a decent argument that while not wearing a tie is declining formality, forgoing an undershirt is forgoing modesty.

I think that's fair in some contexts but not others- a man wearing a white dress shirt with no undershirt really is a bit exposed, but in a lot of other cases it doesn't really make any difference.

Men should wear an undershirt when in professional or even "business casual" contexts. It should, however, be a v-cut neck unless you're totally buttoned up with a tie.

A visible white crew neck under a dress shirt is, with the exception of the military, a massive fashion faux-pax that, unfortunately, a lot of men are not aware of.

Casual / clubbing / beach / summer button down shirts without undershirts are a move for young dudes or a recently divorced fella with money in his 50s.

Is not wearing a tie lazy?

I have no opinion on whether women should wear bras, but I will say that not wearing a tie (on occasions that call for one) is very lazy. Like if I'm at a wedding, and some dude can't even be arsed to put on a shirt and tie? That's lazy as hell and doesn't speak well to that guy's character.

Men used to wear ties when out and about, just like women used to wear skirts and hose. It wasn't just for presumably formal occasions like a wedding.

Also they miss out on the obviously cool “late night tie relaxation” move

and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!

Can you elaborate on this more? Why does the state of your nipples have anything to do with whether or not bras are related to modesty? I'm not sure I'm following there.

I'm not a woman, but I have spoken about bras with my woman friends. A common theme I have heard from them is that when they were given a talk by their moms about why they should wear bras, modesty was brought up. I could see this being true. After all, it conceals more of the form, leaves more to the imagination, makes them less "in your face".

Hell, don't take it from me. Seinfeld had a character who's entire schtick was that she didn't wear a bra and as a result ends up stealing Elaine's boyfriend and perpetually attracts attention to herself, bugging the hell out of Elaine.

Covering women's areolas and nipples has been used as a work around for women going topless, leading me to believe those are the areas of primary concern when people talk about bras and modesty. Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them, and wearing a bra is considered more modest than not wearing a bra (by the OP) that is potentially the case here. It's weird. More clothes is generally considered more modest than fewer clothes, but bras specifically highlight breasts, you would think people who think of bras as for modesty would be arguing for binding, not bras. Bras accentuate the form, they don't conceal it.

So from my perspective if the concern is nipples, bra or not isn't going to change what people see of mine. And braless-me is less breasts-forward than bra-me is.

Covering women's areolas and nipples has been used as a work around for women going topless, leading me to believe those are the areas of primary concern when people talk about bras and modesty.

Perhaps others will disagree, but I'm not actually convinced that that's true. I think it might be more of people having modesty norms that allow for part of the breasts to be uncovered, and that's the easiest way to draw a line, rather than being what is relevant in itself.

I don't really have opinions on what effect bras have on modesty.

I'm with you. It's an easy line to draw in a law somewhere, but I'd call pasties less modest than simply being topless.

Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them

Hard disagree, here. IME, bras standardize the form of breasts under the shirt, thus drawing attention away from them, by making them more uniform. They also hold them in place and tuck them away, once again drawing attention away.

Note that I'm excluding push-up bras from this category, since those are the case where they unequivocally exist solely to accentuate and highlight breasts. But they're also not the norm.

This is fascinating. As a breast haver and occasional bra wearer, my perspective is that wearing a bra makes my breasts more pronounced. And I am just talking regular bras, not any fancy gravity defying wizard bra. When I am not wearing a bra, you can see my breasts as forms under my shirt, but they don't pop out, they aren't molded into stereotypical half domes thrust out from my chest.

The biggest difference is the "liveliness" of braless breasts. If they are big enough to have a jiggle, an inertia of their own, however small, they will draw male attention.

Regular, every day, lift and separate bras don't immobilize breasts. They still move. But yes, they visibly move less than braless breasts do.

Do you think it's the movement that draws the eye, or that OP expects women to be wearing a bra, and is drawn to the deviation from his standard? (Or embrace the power of "and.")

That's an interesting question and I don't know how to separately test these two hypotheses.

Is not wearing a tie lazy?

Yes.

Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Yes.

Is this supposed to be that hard?

Personally I love wearing ties but avoid it whenever possible because my understanding is that they're directly detrimental to one's health.

Wait, is wearing ties unhealthy? I've never heard that before, and to be honest I'm a bit skeptical of the claim. Do you have a source?

Something something constriction of the neck being very bad over the long term.

He might be referencing the old adage of wearing a tie around machinery that it could get entangled in and potentially do bad things to fragile human flesh is a big no-no. Rings are similar.

Other than that, I have no clue.

Then we are likely a lost cause and should abandon all hope. More women wear bras than men wear ties and undershirts. If these things need fixing, the work must start at a more basic level.

Ehh I think undershirts mess up the tuck of my dress shirt.

Are you ironing both your undershirt and your dress shirt?

Is that the trick?

The real workaround is the shirt stay, which if you’re not familiar is a garter that wraps around your thigh and keeps your shirt tucked in with full range of motion.

I wear them almost every time I wear a shirt that’s tucked in.

@The_Nybbler will be here soon with your welcome bag.

We're all out, as usual.

I mostly agree.

I can understand. I disagree - I really don't want to go back to the requirements of my youth of wearing hose over any bared leg and having to do my hair in something more presentable than a pony tail. But I understand people who think we're all a too slovenly.

Things have changed pretty quickly. I remember when my mom first wore jeans outside of the house/yard. Now my kid'll wear sweat pants in public. 3 generations - from skirts and hose in public to PJ bottoms.

If you accept that fashion is signaling, then the overall move might be less toward "informality" than toward subtler and harder-to-fake signals of wealth and status.

Formal clothing controls and covers your body, allowing most people to look presentable if they can buy approximately correct garments and keep them in good repair. By contrast, sweatpants look good almost exclusively on women who can afford to spend a lot of time at the gym and yoga studio (or later, the plastic surgeon's), and who know how to do understated high-quality makeup with expensively well-maintained skin and hair; everybody else just looks schlubby and run-down, like the poors they are.

I've heard a similar argument made about the transition from corsets to the "freedom" of bras and elastic waistbands: every body fits neatly into an hourglass-figure dress when wearing a corset, but now we have to stress and starve ourselves to manufacture de facto corsets out of our own abdominal muscles, yay. And I suspect stockings, bras and other undergarments probably work the same way. Lissome twenty-somethings, and the class of older ladies who drop $$$ on sclerotherapy and implants, look fine in bare legs and bralettes; not so much the rest of us.

If it took us three generations to get here, it'd be unreasonable to expect us to take less than three generations to go back. Baby steps.

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