There are shaggy dog stories, but what follows is a saggy boob story…
The French pride themselves on their admiration of the female form and their love of perky breasts. Thus, it is no surprise that the first ever study on whether bras helped or hindered a woman’s muscle tone and posture was carried out in France. From 1997 to 2013, Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon from the University Hospital of Besançon conducted a survey of female volunteers aged 18 to 35. He concluded that “medically, physiologically and anatomically” breasts gained no benefit from having their weight supported. “Wearing a bra does more harm than good – it does nothing to reduce back pain and weakens the muscles that hold up the breasts, resulting in greater breast sagging,” Jean-Denis Rouillon, a sports science expert, reported at the end of the study. It lasted for 15 years, which is one hell of a long time for those female volunteers to keep being examined and measured. I’m assuming that the 18 to 35 age range was at the start rather than the end of the research period, otherwise they would have been looking three-year-old toddlers which would be ridiculous and also somewhat icky.
Migrating Nipples
The study observed that women who did not wear a bra had “fuller” breasts than the ones who did. Using a slide rule and caliper to make the measurements, researchers apparently found that the nipples of women who stopped wearing bras were lifted by “on average 7 millimeters in one year in relation to the shoulder.” That’s more than a quarter of an inch. If that were to happen every year, your nipples might end up at the top of your shoulders. But there’s no cause for concern as I have been bra-free for more than a decade and my nipples remain in a normal position. Professor Rouillon also noted that “the breasts firm up and stretch marks fade.” He insisted that the bra-free participants in this study experienced such an improvement in terms of breathing and comfort, that most of them could no longer tolerate wearing a bra. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that view. According to Professor Rouillon, bras interfere with blood circulation, so that if women do not wear them, their amount of collagen is increased and the elasticity of breast tissue is improved.
1900s French Lingerie Mistress Peddles Bras
But Rouillon may have an uphill struggle to make his countrywomen give up their brassieres. As the image above from 1906 shows, Gallic women have been wearing the garment for more than a century. This advertisement appeared in Femina, a French magazine created 1901 that lasted for more than 50 years and finally closed its doors, or maybe I should say pages, in 1954. For any non-francophones reading this, I’ll translate the ad copy for you:
“THE NEW BRA provides the greatest service to the ladies who want to have perfect breasts and a perfect figure. Entirely in linen, without busk [a corset stiffener] or whaleboning [Not “without buses or whale watching” which came up when I put this phrase into Google translate]. It is a special cut, very cleverly achieving the desired goal while remaining invisible. It is essential for the ladies who play tennis, ride horseback, under a light blouse, and at the seaside, under the costume. Contact Madame Seurre, lingerie mistress, who is able to make custom outfits.”
How to Measure Droopy Breasts?
However, moving forward 107 years in time to return to the University Hospital of Besançon research, I have a lot of questions about its methodology. My mind boggles at how this study of what the medical profession refers to as “breast ptosis,” a condition where the breast tissues and skin lose elasticity and droop, was carried out. Breast ptosis doesn’t create a pleasant image, but then the French word for a bra, soutien-gorge, literally “throat support,” does not bring to mind an attractive picture either. How were the ptosis measurements standardized? How did researchers adjust for not only differences in breast sizes among participants, but also any individual subject’s changes in breast size over the 15-year survey period?
Disappearing Women?
How many subjects dropped out, or maybe drooped out, before the study was over? This final question is especially relevant as there is also a discrepancy in the news reports about the number of participants.
Harvey Morris wrote in the New York Times on April 11, 2013 that 330 women participated, yet an article published on the same day in the national French newspaper Le Monde reports it as a survey of a small group of 50 women. Maybe these 50 females were all that remained after the rest of the 330 got fed up with having their boobs messed about with by the researchers and did not want to continue with the process for 15 years. It makes sense to me. I would not appreciate some geeky Gallic guy coming at me with his slide rule and calipers, year in year out, to measure how far my nipples were from my shoulders.
For whatever reasons, Professor Rouillon always described the study as preliminary and the results were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. This was despite a long survey period and plenty of news coverage in 2013 on the outcome.
Can You Trust a Man’s View on Bras?
Rouillon’s findings clearly annoyed some bra-loving ladies. Deborah Orr wrote in the Guardian on April 12, 2013 that a male professor could not be expert on bras because he didn’t have breasts. Clearly then, all male gynecologists should be fired as they don’t have vaginas. Orr declares, “a French sports academic reckons that bras are unnecessary for medical reasons, but women don’t need bras for medical reasons, and we don’t need some fool’s advice.” I wonder what Ms. Orr’s view would be on Sydney Ross Singer’s extensive research on the connection between bras and breast cancer. He presents a compelling case that it is stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer. However, Sydney Ross Singer has no breasts, so his research must be unreliable. Except wait…the co-author of his groundbreaking book, Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, Soma Grismaijer, just happens to have breasts, so that does add some credibility. Thus, perhaps 50% of that book has merit.
Germans to Take a Deeper Look at Breasts
But I digress…Now, 12 years after Professor Rouillon completed his saggy breast investigation, sexual health professor, Isaac Wildpinkler at the University of Katzenhirn in Bavaria, Germany, has taken up the challenge to undertake a more rigorous look at women’s breasts, with and without bras. Much of the funding for the proposed 5-year study comes from Bavarian-American billionaire Hans Allofer, an ardent naturist on a campaign to persuade folks to wear as little clothing as possible, whose motto is “dare to be bare.” As soon as this proposed research was made public in academic circles, the team at Katzenhirn University was overwhelmed with requests from male researchers across the country, many of them well past retirement age, to assist in the study. It has been somewhat more difficult to find the female subjects, but since brothels are legal in Germany, they have become a good source of paid recruits.
Bra Manufacturer Defends His Products
The proposed research has faced strong opposition from Glückliche Brüste, a local lingerie factory. Owner Hermann Backpfeifengesicht, whose great-grandfather started the Bavarian company, claims the study is insultingly demeaning to women and that what participants are expected to do amounts to extreme sexual harassment. He is outraged that Katzenhirn University is wasting staff time and public resources on what he describes as trivial, worthless research. He believes that no woman with any self-respect would consider stepping outside her home without the protection of a well-made brassiere and to do otherwise would invite comments about her lack of morality. “My factory’s undergarments have been guarding women’s modesty for more than a century,” he declares. His family business originally produced wasp-waist-style corsets that created a variety of serious health problems and fell out of favor in the early 1900s. At this point the establishment underwent a name change and manufactured brassieres instead.
Hermann Backpfeifengesicht would scoff at the testimonial one of Professor Rouillon’s volunteers gave the press in 2013. She was a 28-year-old woman identified as Capucine who had dumped her bra two year prior. Capucine told a France-info reporter, “You breathe better, you stand straighter and you have less back pain.”
Media Experts Weigh In
Perhaps anticipating Professor Wildpinkler’s proposed research, a recent Guardian article, written by Madeleine Aggeler on October 9, 2024, revisited the 2013 study. Aggeler asked experts, “Do boobs need to hold themselves up? Or does a bra prevent them from drooping over time?” However, one might ask another question, “Do media-anointed experts give reliable opinions?” The plastic surgeon quoted in the Guardian article, Dr. Scot Bradley Glasberg, insisted surgery was the only way to reduce breast droop. Dr. Joanna Wakefield-Scurr, the head of the research group in breast health at Portsmouth University who is known as the “Bra Doc,” claimed that any restrictive clothing is likely, if worn for a long period of time, to change the anatomy underneath and that just as corsets altered the shape of women’s torsos, bras would change breasts to a bra shape. Hmm…Comparing bras to corsets? That doesn’t sound too healthy. And what happens when the bra is removed? Do the boobs magically stay in the same place rather than droop? Where’s the original source documentation on that?
So are women better off with or without a bra, at least as regards keeping their breasts pert? Or does the force of gravity always win, so that the amount of ptosis over time is dependent upon age and breast size rather than whether or not a bra is worn? Even though the new German study is planned to last only 5 years, a third of the time that the original French research spanned, let’s hope the intrepid Professor Wildpinkler at Katzenhirn University will finally give us some definitive answers and help women worldwide keep abreast of this important issue.