As a broadcaster and 2-time breast cancer survivor, I have become known as the lady who throws pink bras, on a mission to persuade women go bra-free. In podcasts, at conferences, on live TV and on stage at Earth Day festivals I can be found tossing bras around and explaining why the link between breast cancer and bras is stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer. Here’s a minute and a half of my bra-flinging antics.
Flying Bras Medley Duration: 1 min. 39 sec.
Contents
- 1 Dressed to Kill: The book that began my bra-free journey
- 2 Why do bras increase breast cancer risk?
- 3 Why won’t Google tell you about the bra-cancer link?
- 4 Why Jewish and black women have more risk of breast cancer
- 5 One day a year to ditch your bra?
- 6 How to go bra-free without looking “indecent”
- 7 Breast binders are like bras on steroids
Dressed to Kill: The book that began my bra-free journey
The link between wearing a bra and breast cancer is stronger than that between smoking and lung cancer. That’s what I heard in a documentary I saw about alternative cancer therapies. Why was I watching it? Well, my latest book, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive after Breast Cancer and Infidelity, is a comic self-help memoir, complete with cartoons, but it is also extensively researched. I embraced my anal BBC journalist background to reference about 70 books and more than 100 articles and studies. So, bras are worse than cigarettes? Surely not? It sounded like a pretty exaggerated claim. The issue was brought to light by medical anthropologist Sydney Ross Singer in a book that he and his wife, Soma Grismaijer, wrote in 1994, with the unforgettable title, Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras. The authors produced a second edition in 2018 that included more studies supporting their hypothesis. I bought a copy and to my amazement found the evidence they presented to be compelling.
Why do bras increase breast cancer risk?
Why won’t Google tell you about the bra-cancer link?
Busting Myth-Buster Myths: Bras and Cancer According to Google
Why Jewish and black women have more risk of breast cancer
Is God Racist and Anti-Semitic? If So, Can We Fight Back by Ditching Our Bras?