The Bra-Free Seven Day Challenge

So, I basically made up The Bra-Free Seven Day Challenge two hours ago, but I think I’m going to do it. I’m going try and live my life braless for a solid week. Seven days. From two hours and fifteen minutes ago until next Monday, April 22nd, at 2 pm.

Why am I embarking on this journey, you may ask? Well, I read a study today that showed going braless may make breasts actually firmer and higher, and at the very least *does not* make them sag. As a person who’s lived in lifelong terror of saggy boobs, and free boobs in general, this is a big idea. One worth a bit of consideration.

Because my name is Daisy Harris, and I’m a bra addict.

Not just a bra addict, but the worst kind of bra addict–an underwire addict. I like the rough stuff, bound up tightly, clenching firmly under my womanly udders. There’s nothing that makes me feel safer that knowing my boobs are high and contained and don’t move an inch when I jog down stairs.

Something happened recently that made me seriously reconsider what I expected of my breasts, though, the shape I always imagined my boobs were supposed to take. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m going to share it with the world: I got a breast lift.

Now, maybe it’s TMI telling you this, dear readers, but I feel at this point you need to know the whole story. I hate when celebrities go on about how diet and exercise gave them their “new look” when you know they have access to personal trainers, personal chefs, and a team of scalpel-wielding doctors. So now you know my dark secret. At forty, I decided to treat myself to something I’d been wanting for a while. A boob job.

Actually, I’d wanted a reduction, but I talked to three different doctors and all insisted I’d be better off with a lift. Apparently, my giant knockers were all in my head and drooping was the real issue. I took their advice, laid back and thought of England and a few hours later, had (hopefully) the tits of my dreams.

Here’s the thing about boobs, though…they don’t look like what you think they’re supposed to look like. Hoisted and immobile is not the natural state of breasts. And though I was thrilled with the results of my surgery, the anxiety crept in right from the start. Were they wrapped tight enough? Would they sag again if I didn’t keep them in a bra?

I wore a bra (sans underwire because that wasn’t allowed) as tight as possible. In fact, those first days, I wore two bras, one on top of the other in order to feel adequately snug. Night and day, I kept my precious beauties contained. After a while though, I started to have problems.

My subcutaneous stitches pulled apart in places, turning an angry red and seeping. After a course of antibiotics, I saw some improvement, but then it got worse again. The doctor prescribed topical antibiotics and I tried to pull out the infections with gauze. Eventually I developed mastitis, requiring a massive dose of antibiotics, and which knocked my on my ass for almost a week.

Then, in the midst of my tearing my hair out over why I didn’t seem to heal, a good friend of mine suggested–why not go braless?

I had things to do! Places to go! I argued. How could I *possibly* not wear a bra? The conversation went something like this:

“Aren’t you all perky now? Why wouldn’t you go braless?”

“Because they’ll fall!”

“In a few days?”

“But, but…they’ll move!”

“Are you planning on jogging?”

In the end I relented, only because I was terrified of further complications. I figured “what do I have to lose?” I went braless for one day, and the mastitis cleared up almost immediately. In fact, I started going braless at night and the places where my stitches were open healed up right away. Apparently, air is good for skin. And blood flows better when you don’t have a band of elastic wrapped around your chest. Go figure.

I’m sharing this tale of woe because I don’t think enough women understand the simple physiology at work here. I’ve taken physiology (and biology and biochemistry) and it didn’t occur to me that taking off my damn bra would help me heal from surgery. What chance do all the other women who have lifts, reductions, enhancements and reconstructions have?

So today I’m facing some cold, hard facts.

1. There is nothing weird, misshapen, oversized, or droopy about my breasts. They look exactly how they’re supposed to look. Quite literally, since I just had them done.

2. My need to wear a bra has nothing whatsoever to do with how my boobs look and everything to do with an internalized feminine ideal shaped by Pamela Anderson (whose boobs are fake) and bras from the 1950s.

3. Wearing a bra will not stop my boobs from drooping again in the future. In fact, it may make them droop worse.

It’s possible my pre-surgery breasts were floppy not only because of weight fluctuations in adolescence, two pregnancies, and years of breast feeding. They may have flopped, in part, because for twenty six years, I dragged them into a position nature didn’t design, and yanked them higher every chance I got. Not like I feel guilty. The babies no doubt were the biggest factor (combined with my age), but still…

That’s all in the past. The issue for me is now. And NOW, right this second, there is NO REASON for me to wear a bra, and every reason for me to let the girls free. I still have some healing to do, and more than that, I’m in desperate need of psychological re-adjustment.

I’m sitting at Starbucks right now writing this, and in my head, I’m repeating, No body is looking at my boobs… Nobody is looking at my boobs… You can’t tell I’m not wearing a bra… Maybe if I keeping repeating these things for seven days solid, I’ll start to believe they’re true.

The post The Bra-Free Seven Day Challenge appeared first on .