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First Bra Experiences

A few years ago, Ian Brodie set out like an explorer of old to uncover the mysteries of that most elusive of cultures, adolescent girls.  His research led to a surprising destination: a detailed study of women’s underwear.  His work, published in the most recent issue of the journal Ethnologies, found that for a young woman buying her first bra is a surprisingly complex event. 
“Popular culture often depicts these moments when mothers take their daughters out to a store to buy them their first bra, and the girls emerge from the experience somewhat wiser and, somehow, as women. But I didn’t know if that was indeed the case: so I thought I’d ask.” The results of the research have just been published as “‘The Harsh Reality of Being a Woman: First Bra Experiences.”
Professor Brodie, who is an assistant professor of Folklore and Chair of the Department of Heritage and Culture, recently published this examination of a time in a young woman’s life where everything is changing.
“My first question was, When is it time to first wear a bra? Breast size is often not the issue: many girls wear one when their breasts have yet to develop to where support is an issue, while others resist wearing one until far beyond that point, if at all. The decision is typically a social one.”
There are a number of physical changes a young woman goes through during puberty, but three major changes were singled out by the women Brodie interviewed as changes “you have to deal with.” Two of these are menstruation and pubic and leg hair growth, both of which can be easily kept from public display.  Breasts, on the other hand, are conspicuous, whether they develop earlier or later in the young woman’s life.
Bras can act as a form of “conspicuous concealment,” where attention is drawn to the effort to control the size, shape, and/or movement of the young woman’s breasts. This drawing of attention may be either deliberate or unintended, but the wearing of a bra signifies – to the public, to peers, to family, and to the self – that someone, either the young woman herself or a parent or guardian, is acknowledging a shift to adulthood or semi-adulthood. As an exercise of a deliberate choice, purchasing a young woman’s first bra serves to identify and mark this transition; it becomes a mediating point between physical developments and purely social developments like make-up, high-heeled shoes, curfew renegotiation, and so forth.
The research process itself raises questions of gender and culture.  For example, how does a married heterosexual male professor in his early thirties study women’s… unmentionables? Fortunately, he had access to a peer group of adult women who would allow him to ask personal questions which typical decorum would leave unasked.
“That being said, there was one definite advantage to being a man and doing this research. With the anticipation that I knew nothing, certain things were explained to me that might have been taken for granted as common sense had I been a woman. One unexpected outcome of the research was a consideration of the research process itself, and the implications of gender on the fieldwork process.” It would appear that there are certain advantages to being a man, and it might be surprising that one of those advantages lies in studying women’s experiences with their underwear.