‘It’s a happiness I’ve never known’: Should you live the braless life in quarantine?
There are so many things we can’t control as the coronavirus quarantine continues. When schools, stores and restaurants will reopen. When we can go to the beach again. When we will stop being drawn into deep, intimate embraces with the refrigerator, hiding our shame from loved ones under a series of sweatpants.
But women have discovered there is one thing they can control: Whether or not they wear a bra.
Putting on a bra every morning and slinging it off at night has been a way of life since adolescence for most women, especially in Miami, where how you look is often weighed as heavily as other more important factors, like which Catholic high school you went to and do you really admit eating bacalao croquetas?
But now, as more women work from home and can only be seen from the clavicles up on video chats, they are reveling in the siren song of bralessness, discovering a new way of life that involves truth, beauty and sure, maybe some saggage, but also definitely freedom.
The women of Miami have spoken, and bras are canceled.
“It’s a happiness that I’ve never known before,” says a project manager for a South Miami media company, who usually wears a suit to the office. “ I have never not worn a bra. But now that I’ve gone braless for six weeks, I open my drawer and I hear ‘Who are you?’ My boobs are like, ‘Back up!’“
A Kendall teacher concedes that she’ll reluctantly put on a bra for Zoom meetings but adds “the second they are done, the bra comes off. Who needs that kind of restriction, anyway?”
“It’s almost like shedding a layer of skin,” explains a South Beach travel and hospitality publicist. “Normally for work I dress up and put on make up and put on heels. Now it’s nice to just be able to stay at home and remove those layers and be just as productive. It’s liberating.”
The movement is not just happening in Miami, of course, and it’s probably not much of a concern for those who already work at home or have opted for implants, which emerge triumphant from every gravitational battle. But many women are clearly reconsidering if the underwire life is worth living.
The media is wondering, too. Harper’s Bazaar asks “But Will We Ever Wear Bras Again?” A Huffington Post column advocates that you “keep those chest prisons in your drawer where they belong.” A recent column in Medium touts the “Joys of Going Braless During a Quarantine.”
Shape magazine weighed in on the pros and cons of skipping bras altogether, concluding that “it’s more important than ever to do things that make you feel good and comfortable. And if not wearing a bra for a while will do that, then so be it.” On the other hand, the UK’s DailyMail.com predicts dire consequences and warns going braless could have long-term effects, some of them inevitable and none of them anything anyone wants to think about.
Miami fashion blogger Maria Tettamanti, however, is not going to tell you to strap that harness back on. She falls into the enjoy-it-while-you-can camp.
“I’m braless as we speak,” she says. “The only positive attribute coming out of this pandemic is the notion we can work from home braless — free of wires, overly snug, overly padded bras.”
She does advocate wearing a bra for Zoom meetings: “I adhere to a ‘business on the top, party on the bottom’ logic. . . . unless you Machiavelli the situation and wear a blazer.”
There’s no downside to going braless at this time, she says: “The only downside is having to wear one once life reverts back to normal.”
Will bra-buying habits change as the threat of coronavirus fades? Things have already shifted a little. The New York Post reported that wireless bra sales were up 40 percent since women started working at home in March. Not wanting to be left behind, Glamour touted the 17 Best Wireless Bras to Wear All Day Every Day.
So what will Miami do when it’s time to return to the office?
“I don’t know if I want to go back,” muses the South Miami project manager. “When you buy a new bra, there’s always something that pokes at you. . . . I want to feel as comfortable and free as I felt for the last six weeks! I need something that’s comfortable. Comfort is going to be the no. 1 thing. It could change the bra market. Maybe we’ll get a lot more choices.”
Others are resigned to their fate.
“When the time comes to get back into work mode, I’ll be ready to spring back into it,” admits the Miami Beach publicist. “I look forward to when that day comes. In the meantime if I can just be comfortable, I most certainly will. But this is a temporary liberation.”