Day 17 of 111 Days of Love – Acts of Self-Love – Why I Stopped Wearing A Bra

If you’re a woman – or hey, you could be a cross-dressing man – are you still wearing a bra?

A lot of things changed for me after I quit my job four and a half years ago, to become a full-time location-independent entrepreneur.

When I had a job, I would wear suits and heels to work every day. Then I would come home, change into “sexier” clothes and dressier heels, and go out on the town with my friends or my dates. I would wear a bra day and night, and only take it off when I finally got home at night and got ready for bed.

I had been wearing a bra pretty much ever since junior high. I did not wear a bra because I had large breasts and needed the support. I wore a bra because all the other women were doing it. It was expected. I had learned that my breasts without “shaping” and “control” were unacceptable.

Breasts are supposed to be perfectly round and symmetrical. My breasts, like many women’s breasts, are not symmetrical, not perfectly round, and not acceptably “large.” I learned they should be hidden.

And I had long, long ago repressed that young teenage part of myself that first wore a bra and thought to myself … wow, this bra feels uncomfortable. This bra feels itchy. This bra feels constraining. I wish I were not wearing this bra.

I had been disowning the part of myself that hated bras for so long that I honestly had shut out of my awareness how uncomfortable bras – and women’s dress shoes – really are …

Until I stopped wearing them.

I stopped wearing bras, and I stopped wearing shoes other than clogs or squishy flip-flops.

As I spent more time in solitude with no reason to wear a bra, and nobody to impress or hide from … I became familiar again with the feelings of comfort and freedom. I wore cozy pajamas and loose cotton tees more and more frequently. Yet I was still dressing up for recording my transformation videos. I was still putting on the make-up and the studio lights and the bra …

Until the day that I had become so accustomed to feeling comfortable and free … that I could not bring myself to put that torture device bra on even for recording videos.

I would literally feel physical pain thinking about putting on a bra or a pair of heels.

No more bras … And now what?

Now I am still releasing the part of myself that says, “but Erika, when you go in public, you at least need to wear shirts or dresses that provide some support and shaping for your misshapen little breasts. Otherwise people are going to feel VERY uncomfortable looking at you.”

I am still fighting the urge to wear big sweatshirts or tight jackets so nobody will feel uncomfortable around me. I still feel the teenage girl in me wanting to hunch my shoulders to make my breasts less visible through my light, comfortable tee shirts.

Realizing all this … becoming aware of all this … Then I just have to wonder … how is it that we all become so disconnected from ourselves that the sight of the natural curve of a woman’s breasts without support or enhancement … would make us feel so very uncomfortable?

And I’ll just leave us with that question hanging there … because as I see it, in that question lie all the other questions that are in such dire need of answering, if any of us are ever going to be free …

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Love,