How Bras Work

let's just get that. We said that, Um, we have a somebody poised to like scratch the needle off the record several episodes ago, and that it was Tommy Chong who who job it was to do that? Now? That's right? Good, callback, Thank you. Talk bras Yeah, we're talking bras Man, which I appreciate it when we do stuff like this, episodes like this, because we have to try harder because we're men, you know, sure the usual it's the only time we have to try harder in life. Sadly that is kind

of true. Um, but we we haven't shied away from topics that have very little to do with us, like um courses. We did one on how Courset's work. Do you remember totally did a whole episode on coursets. Geez. We did one on female puberty. Yeah, footbinding. Yeah, we've done a lot of them. So this is just three one and the same three is a lot when it comes to this kind of stuff. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.

And and uh we we did mention doing one on menstruation not too long ago, and we got a bunch of supportive emails saying like, yes, guys, please please do that, like there's no reason why you should. Please, I've been menstruating for fifty years and I still don't understand it. Please explain, Yeah, exactly. So, actually we have not gotten an email, although we wouldn't know if we had, you know, uh yeah, because our email servers down. Sorry if you've

been bounced everyone. Yeah, we're working on it. So we're talking Bras, which is short for Brazier, which doesn't have a definite origin as far as we know. We think that it came about in the twentieth century, early twentieth century. I think it first appeared in print in nine seven or something like that, and that in French it means one of two things. It means either arm covering, which is I think derived from like medieval armor, French medieval armor,

I don't know. And then the other thing I saw was a child's vest, which that to me is just lovely. If that's what they're trying to say with the bra, that it's like a child size vest that you wear around your over your breasts. I love that idea. You want to know something funny. For the first in minutes researching this, this was put together by our pal Dave brus I kept thinking, why is ruse Why does he keep talking about brasseries? Why does he keep talking about

quaint little French restaurants. That's funny, It's very close. It looks like Brazier. It does well yeah, yeah, um yeah it does. I think if that I was just a little further towards the end, we would be talking about casual French restaurants, the t g I Fridays of France. Well, that's that's better than my experience. For the first thirty minutes, I was researching nothing but carbraws. Oh god, the Lebras,

remember those? No, I think there was a Lebra, which was one of the big popular models at the time for like Porsches and stuff like that. I don't remember that at all. You know, my dad very stupidly bought a Porsche when I was in high school. Oh no, with that food truck money, with that big, big public school teacher money. He went out, he went out and bought a Porsche, and and surprised my mom and the

rest of the family. They sweet Porsche nine eleven, like a new one that no one was allowed to like breathe on. No, it wasn't new, but he he very quickly went out and this is very my dad, And like the next week he had like the Porsche is sad, the Porsche glasses, the Porsche hat, and uh, we didn't have that for very long. I think I drove it one time, like around the block, and he was like, and it was. They were not fun cards to drive.

They were very difficult to drive. Yeah. Yeah, They're all about being in as one with the road and if the road is not so great, then it's not not very fun. Yeah. But I will say piggybacking on this story, Um, I've been watching the TV show red Oaks. Have you ever seen it? I have never even heard of it. I had either It's It was an Amazon show that ran for three seasons about sort of like Cat Shacky. It's a kid who works at a tennis club in the eighties and um, very very eighties show, and the

drug dealer drives this really sweet Porsche. Remember those? Is that the one like the Lotus is free? Yeah? Well it's yeah, the Risky Business car. Okay, I never saw that movie. Oh really, yeah, dude, you need to see Risky Business. Great movie. IM I've got a list going. It's really good. It's really good. But anyway, the nine eleven gets all the you know, all the headlines. But that was so sweet, and I was like, man, I wonder what you could get eighties fo I bet it's

not that much. And it looked it up how much? Well there was a range like you can get one that's in not greater shape for like twelve thousand dollars or up to sixty grand for a cherry low mileage one. Right. I think that's pretty much the same with all vincage cars. I was looking at Pinto station wagons different ends of the spectrum. There's about four or five mint condition Pinto station wagons in existence that are really expensive. The rest

are exactly what you would expect. That's funny. So we're talking bras today. Obviously we just wanted to get rid of anybody who might benefit from listening to this, so we talked about portions and stuff. Yeah, so the bras, the modern bra has only been around for about a hundred and fifty years. And Dave makes a really good point of the fact that this thing that's only been around for a hundred and fifty years has been one of the most complicated garments in the history of the world.

I think, yeah, not necessarily in its designer manufacture, but in its relation to society as a whole totally. So you've got, um, apparently a completely and utter lack of bras. But as women's ordered to play sports a little more, it was okay for them to wear bras I think in the twentieth century um, And in fact, it was a woman who invented the sports braw Um two women actually, I think in ninth queven Um. They invented what was called the jog bra from two jock straps that they

put together. But what's you know, it's kind of a funny, cute little origin story. But they ended up like revolutionizing sports, Like women were allowed to play sports. I think Title nine have been passed a couple of years before this, But the fact is you couldn't play sports because there wasn't much support out there for you. So to invent the sports brawl was tantamount to introducing women in practice into sports. It's pretty huge. It is in the history

of the brawl also incorporates um. Fashion Um. It incorporates societal norms and how they changed, so did the bra, how women changed over the years and UH and their own rights over their own comfort in their own fashion, um, taking back back um, and it really kind of everything in between. The bra is a very complicated under garment,

and undergarment it is. It is very complicated. UM. What I was hardened to see those that today apparently and for the last several years, it's been all about comfort and realness and finding like a brawl that fits. And apparently I was very surprised to find this that that has not been the norm that especially in America at least, brawl makers have made like X number of sizes. And if your breast didn't happen to fit the brawl that

was on you, there's something wrong with your body. Because these are the standard sizes and this is what we're selling. And so women have for a very long time had a lot of women have had braws that just do not fit them because they just can't find them in America. And that's kind of led to this revolution in brawl making and also braw sizing that has um allowed for women to have much better, much more comfortable fits with bras. And I'm just glad for that. Yeah, me too. Uh.

The average American woman supposedly owns six bras. Um there are officially there are twenty different styles of bras that you can buy. And there's this great quote here. It's from a from a book called Uplift Colon the Bra in America by Jane Farrell Beck and Colleen Gao, And this sort of really pinpoints the um what you're trying to do with the bra and why it's so tough to get a great fit and one that really works for everybody. Uh. Brasseries, Oh wait, braziers must do more

than fit a multitude of bodies. They must accommodate the same body as it changes through the monthly cycle and the life cycle. They must provide for movement of the torso and arms in many directions without chafing or binding

without slipping out of position. And as if that were not enough, braziers must retain their own structure throughout multiple wearings and launderings, must not abraid in contact with clothing, must remain as a rule, inconspicuous beneath the outer clothing while harmonizing with a desired silhouette, and must be priced to sell to many customers. There's no wonder that hundreds of attempts have been made to design the ideal breast supporter over the past one hundred and forty years that

says at all, It really does. It is a lot more complicated than say, boxer shorts. Yeah, those are easy. So um, there's also a lot of money to be made in it. Um, just I saw just the sports brawl industry alone is worth like seven billion dollars a year. There's a lot of money made from braws and so as a result, about six million of them mermaid every year. Um, there's about twenty six thousand different bra patterns in existence. When you said twenty different styles, that's like racer back

or demi cup. That like large category of brawl as far as like different patterns and types of browsers, tens of thousands of them, um, and each one has a lot of different moving parts. I saw forty different parts from straps, clasps, underwire, all that stuff. Um. And that it takes months and months of dozens of people working together to to create a new bra. It's not just like a new thing. So there's a lot of thought and time and effort and money going into braw production.

And then from what I've seen, there's virtually an equal amount of time and effort and thought going into braw purchasing too. From what I'm seeing, it's like not the easiest thing in the world to buy a bra if you want the brawl to be one that is your new favorite. Yeah, did you uh? Did you have any

flashbacks of young Josh while you were researching this? So like Sears catalog type of stuff, practicing, practicing unhooking bras by wearing them myself, or simply you know, the eighties was a generally more naive moment in time before the internet, Like se seeing a lady in a bra leaning against a tree was a pretty big deal. Yes, well should we should we take a break and then dive into

the history. Yeah, let's let's I think it's a good idea. Okay, we'll be right back with the history of the brasserie right after this. Well, now we're on the road, Ivan in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck you should know, all right? Okay, So, as everybody knows, there was a battle between Otto von tits Ling and Philippe Brazier over who invented the bra and is um the great Bette Midler instructed all of us we know who won that battle because we all

you wear a Brazier, not a Titsling. Was that a Bette Midler? Bit is from beaches? Oh? I saw that in the eighties when it came out, and not since then. I don't think I've seen it since the eighties either, But I guess that really really stuck with me. Yeah. So the real first patents for the bra was filed in eighteen sixty three. Um Brazier the the word. It wasn't going till the twentieth century, But that wasn't the

first bra. Um Dave Sin even a photo with this research, which is pretty great, of a Sicilian mosaic called bikini girls. And if you look up bikini girls. Well, you're gonna get a lot of results. But if you look up Sicilian mosaic bikini girls, you will see a mosaic from about four hundred to three hundred b C. That shows these young athletic women wearing bikinis, clearly wearing what looks like a bra or bikini top. But it's basically exactly

what pro beach volleyball players were today. Like, no joke, it looks exactly like it, but strap less, right, yeah, I think a lot of them were strapless stuff too. And also there is short shorts like even with a butterfly cut. If you look closely, they have a like a that cutter on the side. Um, I mean like it looks exactly like pro volleyball players. And this is twenty four hundred years ago, so it seems like they were wearing what's called an uh epodesmi or strophium depending

on whether you speak the Greek or the Latin. But it's basically like um, like a cloth wrapped around and then nodded in front to provide support during athletics. That's right. Boom, So medieval times come along. There were European physicians who

were writing about something called breast bags. Uh. And there was a medical text from hundred the royal surgeon in France, Uh, Honoree de Mondeville said, some women insert two bags in their dresses, adjusted to the breasts, fitting tight, and they put them into them every morning and fastened them when possible with a matching band, not a marching band. No, that's that's sort of a bra and built in bra

or breast bag. Just say that ever again, Okay, I agreed, So that's from undred, right, and then you would think, okay, well, the things kind of started hard and fast from that point on, and as far as history is concerned, no, like about a hundred years later, the like all broad

technology was abandoned in favor of the corset. And that's what we thought for a very long time until there was a discovery in two thousand and eight, but it wasn't publicized until I think two thousand and twelve or fifteen that an archaeologist from the University of Innsbruck, Beatrix newts Um I guarantee that's how her name is spelled, or said she was excavating in Austrian castle, Langberg Castle, and she found four medieval brawls that were six hudred

to seven hundred years old, made of linen. Do you remember when this like this was news, This made the rounds When you looked at this, this garment, you're like, that is a brawl. Like it doesn't matter what context do you have, It doesn't matter. You just show somebody a picture of this without any prep or anything like that and say what is this. They would say, well, that's a brawl. You'd say, that's right, it's a seven year old brawl that we did know existed. Like that

whole design. We had no idea that it existed because we thought everything had gone. But basically from I'm sorry to say this one more time, breast bags, two corsets, and that that there was no transition, but in fact, there was a transition to the modern brawl that was abandoned in favor of the corset. Um quite unfortunately. Really yeah, and there was even that. They even found a picture there of a thirteen year old boy with the brawl in his head saying he was Mickey Mouse. That's right.

So that was proof. So we covered the corset, like you said, in our full length episode, so you can go listen to that. But um, very briefly, the corset. The word means corpus in Latin for body, and women would wear these corsets that were um, they had wood or bone, later on that had steel, and it would basically shape their torso it would sense that waist in and it would flatten their breast. And they were very restrictive.

They were very painful, and they did actual real damage to their bodies and at times, oh yeah, like they had trouble digesting, had trouble breathing. Um, you remember, you could train your waist to be to stay that small. We talked a lot about this in the corset episode. But but the big problem with corsets, aside from all that, is that they supported the breast from the bottom up.

And the thing that really differentiated braws from everything else up to that point was that they went the other way. They used the They harnessed the power of the shoulder to hold the breasts up from beneath, not push them up, but hold them suspend them. Um, almost like a pair of breast bags hanging down over your shoulder. There you go again. I can't help myself now I've been told

not to do something. These are the great episodes where I just sometimes like to sit back and watching dig into a big giant hole turn into a thirteen year old boy with the Sears catalog. So this was going on the course. It's were terrible. Women hated them, and by the mid nineteenth century, like you said, they said, you got these strong shoulders, why don't we use those? Uh?

Like the next that's right, um. And the first modern bra patent was filed in eighteen sixty three by a guy named Lumen Chapman, and he was from or he was living at least in Camden, New Jersey, and he had this very first over the shoulder designed uh. And it was tightened in the back like a corset, but it was softer. It was made of stretchy fabric, and it had these cups. Uh. They were called breast puffs in the in the patent for the extra support and comfort.

I think that is radically better than breast bags. He said it again. So Luman Chapman. Strangely enough, his design did not take off, although he does have the first patent. UM.

But a woman named Hermany Cadole, great name. She created something um that was basically like a corset, but it was a corset cut in two and the top half very strongly resembled a modern bra, and she called it the libyan etra or well being um, and her stuff still didn't quite take off, I think because she was married to The corsets still the general course of design, which made sense because at the time, up until the early twentieth century, if you didn't wear a corset, you

were basically advertising that you were you had loose morals. So the course it was just that whether you hated courses with all of your your might, and a lot of women did, you still had to wear them just

to be socially acceptable. So it would take, as far as legend goes uh, a very um, free spirited, very wealthy socialite named Mary Phelps Jacobs to basically say nuts to that, I'm tired of these course it's there there those whale bones stays or protruding through this kind of sheer dress that I want to wear to this dance. Let me try something else. And she apparently instructed one of her maids, because again she was a wealthy socialite, to um to make what we would consider the first

modern brawl out of some silk handkerchiefs and ribbon. Yeah, she was only nineteen. Um, we should point out she moved to Paris later on and changed her name to uh, is it CARESSA Crosby? I think so or Caress I'm not sure if you pronounce that last either, but that was her her final name. So Crosby had this idea when she was nineteen, and it was before a an event that she was going to a debutante ball and she called it the Backless Brazier and people at the

party loved it. I imagine women especially loved it. And she got a patent for this thing in nineteen fourteen and very unwisely sold the idea for a mere fifteen hundred bucks to Warner Brothers Corset Company. Yeah, who turned around in the next thirty years made ten thousand times that amount from that patent. So it's a about thirty eight grand that she was paid today for the patent, and they made about two and twenty five million dollars in today's money off of it. But she was rich anyway,

right in bed. Yeah, she was rich anyway, And she was a super interesting person from what I saw. She basically any um famous author today that was writing in the twenties, she was like real good friends with and she herself wrote to I think she had a publishing house called black son Um. But she wrote for a while pornography on commission from a Oklahoma oil man who couldn't get enough of her stuff. Like that was one of the many things that she she did in her life.

She wrote pornography amazing. So World War One turns out to be a good thing, uh if you're a woman, because steel is in short supply. The US joins the war and says, you know what, we gotta have all the steel in this country go toward war munitions and battleships and stuff. And American women said, oh great, because you know what has steel, my corset. Let's get rid of it and ditch these things for good. And elastic

fabrics started coming into the market. Latex came into the market, and so all of a sudden, American women could finally get rid of the corset, uh, in favor of this new uh, this new invention called the brazier. And of course we don't want you to be too comfortable, ladies. You might want to at least put a girdle on just to keep everything nice and cinched in, which is basically like Hermony Cadell's um two piece corset. But whatever, patriotism freed them from that that um social expectation of

having to wear a corset, which is pretty great. But I saw that the steel that the course it's freed up equaled twenty eight thousand tons, enough to make two battleships in World War One. That's a lot of corset steel. Yeah, so this led to like a complete revolution in undergarments for women. Right. So in the twenties, um the one of the first bras was basically there was a company called boische Form which held the breasts down and back

back into the left. Wait, what was it called boische Form b o y s h Form, And from what I can tell, they were basically saying boyish form, but they shortened it by removing the eye and changed it to boiche for like they'll never know, right, no one will ever get this trickery. But there was because of that flapper style was very much slight and boy ish.

But then along came a company in the late twenties called maiden Form, and they named themselves maiden Form to kind of contradict boiche Form because one of their big things was, hey, man, let's let's not be ashamed of these boobs and try to hide them. Let's accentuate these things in Boy did they ever Yeah, I mean in the World War Two and the age of the big buxom Hollywood bombshell era, people like Jane Russell, uh, then in the fifties with Marilyn Monroe, and it's all this

you know, sort of male ideal at the time. Is is what we're getting at is the bras sort of followed suit. Um, but when these women came on the scene, that's when if you look at TV shows from back then or advertisements, you see these bras that were very pointy, and I think they even called them bullet bras or

torpedo bras. And that was sort of all the rage, just because the the sort of I mean, Hollywood is always sort of driving fashion in that way, and it certainly did back then because tweaky coming along in the sixties are very sort of slim, androgynous. Look. Um, all of a sudden in the sixties, bras were being thrown in the trash can. They're like, we don't need bras

at all. Yeah, And then um, there was a guy a designer who is an avant garde designer named Rudy gern Reich, and he came up with um, the no Bra in nineteen four, which is basically like what you would consider a brawl today. It's it's meant to just kind of be there and be supportive, but also kind of fade into the background, which huh, like a quiet friend exactly. Um. But that's like the antithesis of the torpedo or bullet brawl, which was would take your eye

clean out if you got too close to it. But this is you can kind of see like we've gone from twenties where boy form was or boiche form was all the rage and to the exact opposite, to back to the twenties, and then it kind of swung back toward you know, um, large busty, popping out kind of thing even more than before. Whereas because that was not covered by a sweater which torpedoes, that was all about

accentuating the boobs upward and to the left. Um. And then the wonder Bra kind of really helped move that along. And what was really interesting is I remember when the Wonder Bral came out in America, it was in the nineties, But it turns out that in the far off land of Canada it had been invented thirty years before. It just took thirty years to get down to America and become poverty. Isn't that weird? Yeah, that is totally weird.

And Canadians are too nice to insist, like, by the way, we have a better bra up here, right, And then now things have swung back again to where they're like, do you even need a bra? And a lot of people are like, I don't think you do. It's kind of a personal preference. Yeah, it certainly can be. But also I think there's still very much a stigma. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

it's true. There's just no arguing that right now. No. I mean, if you go, if you're a woman and you go waltzing into a conference meeting at your business and your and you're not wearing a bra, then someone's going to say something. I guarantee you exactly. Yes. But I think also even if you even if somebody didn't say something, or it was okay with everybody else, from what I can tell, there's a certain psychological um security

blanket aspect to wearing a brawl. If that's what you've been raised to do to wear a bra, and to not do that would take a real psychological shift in how you feel and how how secure you feel without it. And I was reading about training bras because I didn't feel like I was enough of a creep as it

is you're like boy. But from what I was reading about training bras, they even if the the girl doesn't need a brawl yet for any real purpose, it provides like some kind of psychological thing that they're like, Okay, I'm keeping up with my peers who actually be or I'm going to like the eighth grade dance or probably say sixth grade dance or something, and I want to wear this dress, but it's gonna look weird if I'm not wearing a bra. So I need a brawl so so.

And I think that kind of psychology continues on well into adulthood too, so that it would be weird, feel weird to not wear a bra if that's what you've done your whole life. Yeah, And I think it also has to do with your comfort level with your with your breast siye um, you know, not to get too personal, but like if I had a dime for every time Emily was like, you gotta go get the delivery food at the door because I'm not wearing a bra um and you know, Emily has bigger boobs. So there I

said it. She might be more comfortable if she had smaller breasts. Um, but I don't know. I'm gonna go home and ask her. Though, Okay, I feel like we should, um sit in silence for five minutes. So you mentioned maiden form. Uh, well, we'll get to this later. But they were um they were founded in nine by William and Ida Rosenthal, who invented or introduced at least the letter based cup sizing system. But um, we'll get to that weird bit of voodoo in a minute, because I

still have no idea what's going on there. But in actually it wasn't. In a year from nineteen sixty three they had a very very successful print ad campaign called I Dream, which you can go look up online, and these ads which were very racy at the time. Of course, we're women doing things topless with just their bra on. They would have on like a regular uh skirt that you would wear in that era, but no top, no blouse,

and that they were dreaming. One lady was dreaming of being a firefighter and she was fighting fighting a fire with with no shirt on. Or um I dreamed I went back to school in my maiden form, Bra, and it's a woman in her brought a grammar school desk. Or I dreamed I won the election in my maiden

form Bra. She's taking the stage on election night. And beyond these being and old advertisements are all funny and awful in every way, but beyond this being funny and awful, it truly is kind of gross that what they're showing are things that are dreams for these women, like having a regular job and things that they may not have been allowed to do at the time. Yeah. So but in at the time, like, yes, they were trying to sell their brawls, and yes the there was like a

certain amount of sex appeal to the whole campaign. But in their defense, like this is a very like progressive, liberating ad campaign. It was conceived by three women. Yeah, and on one hand, and also it's not like they were like ha ha, you couldn't possibly hold public office because you're a woman. It was like like it was showing that women dream of this kind of stuff, that they want to do this kind of thing, and that at least in their dreams, they're capable of doing this,

rather than we can't even talk about that. It's so preposterous, we couldn't even possibly create an ad campaign. So it was kind of like progressive in that sense. It's in retrospect that it's really cringe e. But really what you're cringing, It's not like maiden Form was making fun of women for not being able to to do these things. It's more an indictment of society for them being restricted from

these things at the time. Yeah, that that's This is one of these definitely where you could come at it from a lot of angles and have opinions about it. Um, but we should read they had a contest in uh with the public about new dream ideas and the winner from ninety seven and Dave God bless you for finding this was I dreamed I danced the hornpipe with Sindbad the sailor. Don't you know what that means? That's another thing you can approach from a bunch of different angles.

I think we should approach a message break and then we'll talk about the the wacky world of brass eyzing right after this. Well, now we're on the road driving in your Chuck, want to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, all right, Chuck. So, one thing that I've read is that American braws don't fit um and that there's a reason for that, something like there's a statistic that of women, American women at least are wearing brawls that don't fit.

And supposedly that's kind of made up and based on anecdotal evidence, but it's been bandied about for so long that people take it as gospel. But regardless of whatever the statistic may or may not be, American braws are

known for not fitting. And it's because American bra manufacturers have basically said, we've created this standard measuring scale and it just as economically efficient for us to mass produce you know, this size to this size, and if you happen to fall outside of that size, your s O L and it's your fault. There's something wrong with your body for not adhering to the standard norm body size norm.

This is largely becoming a relic of the past, but it's still from what I can tell, very much present. When you go braw shopping. Yeah, and and you know, I've I've heard this plaint from Emily over the years, and uh and a lot of women that, yeah, it's tough to find a braw that really fits well and feels good and does everything it's supposed to do. And then that's why when you find one, you know, you order like six of them. But there are these days

before we get into the sizing. UM that is changing some now with these more bespoke companies UM that have more custom custom made, tailored to your size kind of things. And I wonder why it took that long for someone to think outside the box and challenge, challenge big brazier and say, hey, you're doing it wrong. I bet there's a lot of money to be made from bespoke braziers. Yeah,

from what I understand, there is. And although it's just now happening in the US, apparently it happened I believe back in the nineties in the UK with UM a movement called braw fitting one word, where it's basically like, look, two measurements is not enough to to create a perfect brawl. You need a bunch of different measurements under different conditions. You need to take your shirt and brawl all the way off. We need to get in there and um, but when we're done, you're going to have a well

fitting brawl. And it's just now catching on in the United States. And what's surprising is that you know it's just now catching on. But this, this technique in the sizing standard that we use here in the United States, goes back to the I think the twenties, if not the thirties. Yeah, yeah, is when they found it made in for him and introduced this cup sizing. And I'm not going to pretend to fully understand this, but I can read, Oh you got it. Yeah, yeah, you go ahead,

though I want to hear your too. No, no, no, because that when what will happen is I'll read and then you'll do it again in your own words. And then this episode is fifteen minutes longer than it should be. All Right, you got my number, and my number happens to be thirty four. See. So the cup system is what it's called. It consists of two measurements and the difference between them. So the first measurement is the overbust, which is the circumference of your chest all the way

around your body across the nipples. That's your overbust measurement, right, Okay, Now, if you'll also measure right below the breasts all the way around your body, that's your underbust. And if you subtract those two, you're going to come up with a difference in inches or centimeters depending on where you are in the world. And you can use that as part of a handy table to say, oh, there's a three inch difference. That means that I'm a C cup, right,

because that's where the letter comes from. Right. The difference between your underbust and your overbust generates some knowledge about the volume that your breasts are going to take up, which is your cup size. Generates knowledge exactly, so that underbust measurement is also used. And the that's the number that comes before it. So if you're a thirty four C, that means your chest is thirty four inches around at

the rib cage under your breasts. And then if you're a C that means that there's a three inch difference. That means that you are thirty seven inches around your chest at the nipples, and so you'd be a thirty four C and that those two measurements are supposedly like all you need to come up with a fitting braw but apparently that's just not true. Yeah, I mean that all makes sense. Um. I think the thing that confused me is the sister sizing. I understand that too. Thing.

Uh So if you have a thirty six C and a thirty four C brazier, that's not the same cup size because a thirty four C is the only true C. So if you want to go up a band size but not the cup size, you buy a thirty six B or thirty eight A. So the volume of the cup size is relative to this or conference of the band. Yeah.

I mean it's as simple as that. I think the problem the breakdown is is that this sister sizing thing has not been widely publicized to women, and so that they think like, well, if the band is a little tight and I'm a thirty six C, that I need to go up to a thirty eight C. And that's just not the case. Yeah. In music, you want to

type band and braziers you don't. Well, Supposedly, part of that brofitting trend that started in the UK is that UM suggests that the tight band is the key to a good fitting brawl, that that's where most of your support comes, and that most women opt for a band size that's a little too loose. But the point is your cup volume does not go up when you go up a band size. It doesn't have to. So that means that a thirty four C, if you go down and band size, you would go up and cup size

and your cup size would stay the same. So the thirty four C is the same as the thirty two D, and then the other way, a thirty four C is the same as the thirty six B. And once you understand the sister sizing thing, then you can actually use this two measurement standard to find a brawl that actually fits better. That's right. And if you're wondering how this all works, it works with uh with bra fitting models.

There are women that get paid money to go in and get fit for thousands and thousands of bras and to give feedback. And this all start well, didn't completely start there, but in the nineteen seventies there was a singer named Dorothy Gallaghan from New York answered an ad for brofitting model and they said, you know what, I know this sounds sexist, and we probably even though it's the seventies. Shouldn't be saying this in an office, but you have the perfect thirty four B s and that's

the standard size which we're designing our bras on. So for almost twenty years, Dorothy Gallaghan was the model in New York in the Lingerie district that would work ten eleven, twelve hour days trying on thousands and thousands of bras and giving her feedback so they could go back to

the sewing machine and redo it. Yeah, because that's the other part of the problem with bras that don't necessarily fit, in addition to not making larger sizes and cup volumes and smaller sizes and cup volumes like they're based around one woman's pair of breasts, and her breasts became the standard for the brawl industry in the twentieth century, so that if you have if you could create a bra that fit Dorothy Gallaghan correctly as a thirty or four B,

you could use that to basically grow out from either way. That's right. So that's a that's a real problem for women who have different shapes and sizes, and it's really sad to me to think that they were told for decades that you know, if you're broad doesn't fit, it's something something's wrong with your body. Not exactly. Well, here's the thing too, it's not just breast size. It's that you know, how how how big your back is and how like the braw it holds the breast the cups do.

But you know, it has to do with your shoulders in your back and your armpits and everything else. Like there's so many nuances to everybody's body, men and women that I mean, I think until recently they were trying to do the best they could, but it was pretty narrow, uh, the options that women had. Yeah, I get the impression that they were not trying to do the best that

they could. That they basically said, when we release a new brawl, it comes in these sizes, Well, doing the best they could for a huge industry that had to satisfy, you know, tens of millions of different kind of bodies, Like they were kind of hand strung. You can't have FO fifty brass sizes and manufacture on that scale. Yeah,

you can't mask manufacture. But I think that's what's being proven, Like you're saying, by this new bespoke revolution and you just you can't get that big, although now you can get that big because it's a bespoke and because you can say, hey, uh, download our app and take these measurements using your phone and upload it and then we'll just custom make some braws for you. And I also read that um Poland makes really really good fitting braws

as well. I read it. I think it was a New York Times article about interesting and the author traveled to Poland to verify this herself, and she said she didn't find the perfect brawl, but she came away with like four or five bras that were awfully close, way closer than she'd ever had before. It's funny, after all these years, I still remember to not put a bra in a dryer because of the movie had big in the angry inch. I don't remember that part now. I

never thought that's why I don't remember that. It's great John Cameron Mitchell, who also a friend of Movie Crush. He's a friend of Knowles. He played head Vig and you know, created the character and directed the film. But there's a scene where he's uh, he's screaming, do not put a bra and a dryer. It's warps And I guess that's true, because ever since then I've been like, I don't know. If I'm doing laundry, I should not put a braw in a dryer. It does do some

weird things to it. Although you can also put it in a laundry bag, and I think that keeps it from like wrapping around stuff, which makes it a lot lasts longer. You can't put it in a dryer. Oh right, yeah, like when a bra like collects everything else in its wake. Exactly. Yeah, So, um, I don't think we can not talk about Victoria's Secret. Man, if I had a dime for every time you said that to me, or is many dumb, dumb guys call

it Victoria's Secrets? Yeah, dummies. So Victoria's Secret actually started out husband and wife um founded it in the seventies in the San Francisco area because the husband had gone to like the department store to buy laundry for his

wife and was treated like a scale for it. Right, even in San Francisco in the seventies, I guess, so, all right, department stores have always been a certain way no matter where you're right, So he said, well, we need to create like a lingerie store that's made for men to go by for women, and that's what they created, was Victoria's Secret, and um it was semi successful. And then they sold to a guy named Leslie Wexman. I believe it was Wexman who had founded the limited and

um he turned he took it. I think he bought it for a million dollars and within two decades it was worth two billion dollars. And um, the guy who founded it with his wife, they ended up getting divorced and he he um died, broke and jumped from the Golden gate Bridge. Sadly enough. Wow, But Victoria's Secret dominated the um the braw industry in the United States for many, many decades until very recently when it was overthrown by

women who said enough, well it's funny, you know. Roy Raymond said, you know what we need is a store where men can go in and buy sexy lingerie for their wives. And what he failed to hear was the sound of tens of millions of women across the country saying, no, you don't right. Well, that's what that's what um, Leslie,

I think it's Wexman. That's what he figured out was that this this thing was a good idea, but they had missed the mark and that they were marketing towards men and they were completely isolating women because he said, like these Victorious secret stores were lit with like, you know, weird kind of reddish lighting and there were velvet couches and oriental rugs. And he said it wasn't this was like in the in the early seventies and or late

seventies and early eighties. Yeah, that's what I'm talking, Okay, all right, So he said, man, I would have loved to seen this. He said, they were they were Victorian, not like a Victorian um uh foyer. They were like a Victorian brothel basically, and it was like just chasing women away, attracting men, but women by you know, underwear

for themselves way more than their husbands do. And so he kind of revamped it a little bit and turned it into something that women felt comfortable and actually wanted to go into. Yeah, it's interesting. According to that book Uplift that we mentioned earlier, Uh, despite Victoria's Secret in its history, UH, women have really been key to the

development of bras in the United States. I think over twelve hundred u S patents have been awarded for braws between eighteen sixty three and nineteen sixty nine, and half of those have been held by women. And in the industry, uh, they have always held pretty important positions and been well regarded designers and managers, UM specialists, merchandizing, UM, promotional product managers. It is one industry where it seems that has not been Here's a product for women run entirely by men,

and rightfully so I would say, yeah, absolutely so. UM. There is also a very famous legend as far as Bras go, which is the burning of Bras at night demonstration. No, it's a myth. There was. There was, in fact a demonstration outside of Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in night. It was the brainchild of Carol hannish Um who helped basically at this moment give birth to the second wave feminism.

And they actually had a trash can that said freedom trash can and women threw stuff into it that they considered like shackles of the patriarchy, like false eyelashes, bras lingerie, that kind of stuff. But there was no burning. That came from a reporter who suggested that they burn it as a nod to the burning of draft cards, but no one actually burned this stuff, but it became kind of set in stone as is true, even though it really wasn't. That's right, big fat. And then lastly, chuck, i'

got one extra thing. You're ready? Ready? Do you have anything else? I don't? Do you need to are a brawl?

It's a long standing question and apparently the answer is no, at least as far as a study in France, a fifteen year study of three women I think they are aged eighteen to thirty five, and the study found that women who did not wear bras developed more muscle muscle tissue in their breasts, ostensibly to provide support that the brawl wasn't there to provide, and that by proxy, if you did wear a brawl, your muscle or the muscles in your breasts were less prone to develop and thus

you would have um more likely to have breasts that sag or pendulouar breasts than you would have if you didn't wear a brawl, kind of like you're making your breast sink or swim by not wearing a braw. So it's just one study, but it is pretty pretty um surprising that they found basically the opposite of conventional wisdom, because most people say if you don't wear braw, your breast will get saggy, and that's apparently not true. Interesting, And I also ran across a weird question on Google.

You know it has like suggested searches what happens if we squeeze breast? I don't know. I didn't even bother to look. Just the question itself was good enough. Oh man, do you got anything else? I got nothing else. What about the bro or the man's ear? Oh yeah, I can't forget the brou Well, since we said bro, it's time for listener mail everybody. I'm gonna call this more on the days. Hey, guys, love the show. Thanks for all you do. It's especially meaningful in these crazy times.

I'm currently hanging out in northern Japan on a trip that changed from a between chops snowboarding sabbatical in December. Too. Well, I guess I live here for now, so you're bating. This is not a bad place to be. I would

imagine it's good for you, Adam. I'm sure you guys get a tumul got a ton of similar emails to this, But in the day's episode you mentioned the type of toilet with a sink sprayer attachment nearby, and my experience this is a super common thing in households and many lower budget hotel accommodations in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. It is awesome and commonly referred to as

the bum gun by foreign travelers and expats. I don't know the etymology of bum gun, so I'm not sure if that term has been adopted domestically in various bum a gun enthusiast countries. But like one ring or Spidy's abilities, that has great power and must be wielded carefully. So bum gun wisely, my friends, that is from Adam takes a lot Adam uh and best of luck to you in your new home. Uh. Hang tight, buddy, things will

pass eventually. If you want to get in touch with us like Adam did and talk about bum guns or brawls or what have you, you can email send us an email to stuff Podcasts How Stuff Works dot com. Yo Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, h