Even for those of us with moderate-sized breasts, the jiggling can be anywhere from distracting to moderately uncomfortable when, say, walking briskly.
And that's putting aside all the social pressures, shaping and body image issues, etc.
But I can only talk about my experience. It would be certainly different with larger breasts.
Still, I believe bras should not be pushed as the default option - mostly because we don't see similar things pushed on overweight men ('manboobs' or 'moobs').
Because moobs are just balls of fat. Actual breasts contain glandular tissue which moves differently and has more heft.
While men with ordinary moobs don't need bras, men with gynecomastia (actual breast tissue growth) really should be wearing them. I'm more interested in destigmatizing the notion of gynecomastic men wearing bras than I am in discouraging women from having support.
Also, here's something I can actually give insight into specifically because I'm transgender. Before I transitioned, I was obese (and I still am), and I had noticeable moobs. I never felt like I needed a bra back then, as there was no pain or discomfort from moving around. After being on HRT for a while, I developed significant breasts, and now it's extremely uncomfortable and a fair amount painful for me to go without support. Moobs are not boobs.
Thanks for the interesting first hand perspective.
See Seinfeld S6E17 "The Doorman"
Well, because of gendered body stereotypes, lift and present isn't something anyone (approximately) wants with moobs, and anything that resembles a bra produces mockery, anyway.
But male-targeted control garments functionally equivalent to a combination sports bra and tummy girdle do exist for overweight men (the market for men who need moob control without tummy control is small enough that there doesn't seem to be anything targeted to them.)
And I do like being constricted. Wearing a well-fitting bra feels like being hugged all the time, and it feels great.
Also,
> Our moms didn't burn their bras in the 50s so we could have the privilege to spent $350 on them in the future.
A) Bra-burning was a myth. It never happened.
B) Second-wave feminism has been considered harmful for quite some time now. It's incredibly toxic due to being inextricably linked with racism, transphobia, femmephobia, kinkshaming, and sex-negativity. The vast majority of feminists have moved on to third-wave feminism, which doesn't have these problems.
For people like me who had to look it up:
The dramatic, symbolic use of a trash can to dispose of feminine objects caught the media's attention. Protest organizer Hanisch said about the Freedom Trash Can afterward, "We had intended to burn it, but the police department, since we were on the boardwalk, wouldn't let us do the burning." A story by Lindsy Van Gelder in the New York Post carried a headline "Bra Burners and Miss America." Her story drew an analogy between the feminist protest and Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards. A local news story in the Atlantic City Press erroneously reported that "the bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women's magazines burned in the 'Freedom Trash Can'". Individuals who were present said that no one burned a bra nor did anyone take off her bra.
The parallel between protesters burning their draft cards and women burning their bras were encouraged by organizers including Robin Morgan. The phrase became headline material and was quickly associated with women who chose to go braless. Feminism and "bra-burning" then became linked in popular culture. The analogous term "jockstrap-burning" has since been coined as a reference to masculism.
The idea of simple linear series of waves of feminism is as at least as harmful to understanding as any version of feminism has been to, well, anything.
(But, if you must adhere to it, everyone that matters has moved on to fourth-wave feminism these days.)
That was also true of second- (and even first-)wave feminism, too.
> There's definitely a broader spectrum of opinions and that alone seems like a good development to me
Third- (and even fourth-)wave feminism may have some different and new ideas and means of presenting them, but much of the core diversity of approaches on feminism has really been around since the so-called “first-wave” in the split between what might (oversimplifying a multiaxis variation into a dichotomy based on some correlations among the axes) be seen as conservative/Christian/bourgeois/virtue-oriented feminism on one side and revolutionary/materialist/proletarian/egalitarian feminism on the other.
I do not know why I would pay for the privilege of being constricted but hurting less!
There is a lot of research on how bras are useless, and some people even wonder if by limiting lymphatic drainage bras may help promoting cancer.
I wear a sport bra when I am in a gym, and a regular off the shelf bra if I am going in a social encounter where I fear my "freedom" would be used again me to judge my character.
But that's about it. Our moms didn't burn their bras in the 50s so we could have the privilege to spent $350 on them in the future.