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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30111 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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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.

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