My aunt Christine told me once, during a family barbecue in 2019, that she’d never worn a bra after turning forty and her breasts were (in her opinion) “holding up better than her sister’s who wore one every day since she was thirteen.” She said it while passing me a plate of sausages, without a care in the world, like she’d just told me the bins go out on Tuesdays. I couldn’t stop thinking about that sentence for four years. Sometimes not. But often, it would bubble up into my mind and sit there, catalogued in my brain under “things I should probably look into” next to “do you actually need to reapply sunscreen every two hours” and “is the five second rule real”.
So I looked into it. Properly.
Did studies and asked actual doctors, not just clicked on forum threads run by people named BrandonSeekTheTruth or BraFreeForever92. And you know what? It pissed me off a little, because the truthful answer is less interesting than either side of this debate wants it to be, and I’d developed a mighty tasty Legends Of Heroes be nicer craving for a definitive asshole.
There’s no strong evidence that wearing a bra causes sagging. There’s equally little evidence that not wearing one stops it happening. The study everyone likes to quote kept getting mentioned in articles but never seemed to have proved the oft-repeated conclusions, a French project monitoring around 300 women for 15 years called Initiatives Etudes Santé (IES) led by someone named Jean Denis Rouillon, found that participants who didn’t wear bras had marginally better muscle tone and less droop after that time. It was splashed all over as “science proves bras cause sagging” which isn’t what the research actually showed at all, and Rouillon himself countered claims it had when questioned, highlighting how few participants he actually had compared to the thousands many articles claimed, and that they weren’t monitored in a way which could rule out variables like age, genetics, weight changes, pregnancy etc etc- all the stuff we know is actually impactful.
It’s one study. It’s fascinating. But it is not conclusive.
What actually causes sagging, and why your bra isn’t responsible
So here’s the thing that took me longest to swallow because it really fucking sucks as an answer. If your tits are going to sag, for any reason and to whatever extent they’re going to sag, it isn’t because of whether you wear a bra or not. Sagging is caused by things a thin piece of material strapped across your chest can’t hope to combat. Collagen production lessening as you age, which affects skin elasticity. Ligament stretch- specifically your Cooper’s ligaments, which help support your boobs and which once stretched, don’t return to their previous size. I learned about that one from my mate Priya on my hen do; she used to work in aesthetic medicine and had a calm, lethal way of delivering the news that sounded like she’d had to explain that specific fact to disgruntledpatients dozens of times before. Weight gain. Pregnancy and feeding your baby, which changes the tissue density of your boobs whether you were rocking a bra through that time or not. Smoking, which can destroy elastin. Genetics.
Your bra can’t control or affect those things unless you count weight gain as “your bra made me sit at my desk all day instead of going to the gym at lunchtime so yeah maybe.”
If you wear a bra, it sits atop all of those things. It can’t touch your ligaments to prevent them stretching. It doesn’t interact with the collagen structure of your skin. All it does is hold up the weight of your breasts for as long as you wear it, like a good pair of trainers support your feet when you’re walking without meaning you’ll never have foot problems for as long as you live. Take your shoes off and your feet will immediately return to being your feet. Take your bra off and your boobs will, over time, return to whatever your ligaments and skin decide to do in whichever direction they want to naturally hang.
The misconception, I believe, comes from thinking “supportive undergarment” is the same as “reshaping your body permanently,” which is not the same at all. The latter is more akin to how ACTUALLY wearing a corset, over years and years and years of tight-lacing, can shift your rib cage. Bras don’t do this. They are not a format of wearable bodysuits designed with that sort of pressure in mind. Sure, they hold you up. But they’re not busy all day putting stress on your boobs to keep them petite, except in the brief handful of minutes each day when you actually put them on.
My friend Owen doesn’t think about any of this. Like literally one per cent of his life is spent ever considering underwear. We were drinking once and I asked him what he thought because even he deserved to have an educated opinion on the subject. He replied with what might be the actually helpful question about bras and sagging everybody’s thinking: “so if it doesn’t affect it long term, why does it feel weird when you take your bra off at the end of the day?” Well, because it DOES feel weird. Your boobs are used to being supported while you’re wearing it, just as your shoulders feel off kilter when you sling a heavy bag down after carrying it. Support is being removed in that instance. It doesn’t mean the bag you were carrying rewired the shape of your shoulders.
Bralettes were happening when I looked into this, let’s talk about them
The question people seem to ask around bralettes slightly more, and I think this is because they LOOK like “the laziest underwear option.” Flimsier. Less serious. So of course they’d be worse for your tits by default right? I AGED BELIEVED THIS TRUTH FOR ABOUT TWO YEARS before my sister Fern casually pointed out that about 99 per cent of bralettes are literally just bras without wire, and wire hasn’t been responsible for support since forever; the band has.
The band, the part of your bra that goes around your rib cage, does the actual heavy lifting when it comes to support in any bra, with or without wire. Get a properly fitted wire free bra that has a snug band and is made of quality fabric and it will support you WAY more effectively than a rubbish fitting underwired number. I learned that lesson the hard way by wearing the wrong band size for decades because NO ONE EVER TELLS YOU THE UNDERWIRE IS IRRELEVANT TO FIT AND YOU JUST HAVE TO EXPERIMENT FOREVER, not realising until I actually visited a shop, asked for a professional fitting and the lady looked at me and said “actually you’re in the wrong size, love” like she told that to people five times a day. Your band keeps your breasts up. Whether there’s wire in there or not is irrelevant. Save for the uncomfortable poke.
So no, wearing a bralette will not cause your breasts to suddenly freefall just as no wearing a wired bra will prevent them from ever dropping. Fit is what’s important. Category is meaningless.
What about going COMPLETELY BRALESS? Is that the magic answer everyone’s scared to ask?
Do they bounce back if you never wear a bra? Maybe?! Who knows!! Can we rule out that not wearing a bra at all is definitely better for you in some way? Nope. Can’t. Will probably always debate forever because OF COURSE comfort and “correctness” become conflated. They’re two different claims. Just because going braless is more comfortable for you than wearing a bra isn’t proof that no bra is the healthy/the best option.
Not wearing a bra might be MORE comfortable for you. That’s absolutely fine. Great, even! It doesn’t mean you’ve found the holy grail of preventative measures against sagging in 20 years’ time. And I hate that the bralessness discourse on social media loves linking to articles about how it’s “better for your boobs” every other sentence like we absolutely know that to be true when actually… we don’t.
So what DO I think? Am I going back to wearing a bra now?
Point me to the money quote and I’ll swear at you.
I stopped wearing underwire as my “school run” bra roughly eight months ago, not because of some profound revelation from a study but because I got properly fitted in that aforementioned shop in Leeds and was convinced by the lady (same one!) to try on some soft, wire-free alternatives that just fit me so much better than what I was used to wearing I actually said out loud “oh” when testing the fit in the changing room. Does that new bra prevent sagging in ways my old one didn’t? Who fucking knows. But my new one fits and my old one didn’t!
And that’s what made all the difference, not whether it had wire.
I’ll wear bralettes now because they tend to fit me better than traditional bras. The same goes for sports bras. And I wear training leggings that look like butt synonyms and people are like “nice yoga pants!” I don’t care what type of underwear I wear on my body, as long as it fits. Fuck it, I’ll even wear thongs. UNDERWEAR IS SUPERPERSONAL AND NOT FUN ENOUGH TO POKE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT ALLEGED ETHERAL DAMAGING LONG TERM EFFECTS.
Please don’t talk to your sister about your boobs looking better than theirs. Trust me.
