by: Shanna Williams

I have been an avid bra wearer my whole life. From the time I was a little sixth grader changing for P.E., I had a bright pink training bra across my chest. As I got older, I realized that bras were not only a practical invention, but also a fabricated material of sexuality. Nude and tan bras were soon seen as gross and ugly, while in my head, they were the most functional bras. You could wear them under anything and the color would never show through! But Victoria’s Secret does not make their profit off functional bras.

On the weekend of my fifteenth birthday, I decided to stop buying bras from Nordstrom with my mom, and instead I went shopping with my friends at Victoria’s Secret. Walking in, we couldn’t stop giggling. There were half-naked girls plastered against every wall. Even the mannequin displays of the bras and underwear were oversexualized. We tried on every lacy, jeweled bra there was. And of course the extra-padded, pink push-up bras. I bought five bras, spending every single penny I had gotten for my birthday.

Bras were a sense of entitlement, and still sort of are. Only the coolest girls shopped at Victoria’s Secret. The stigma back then was: if you don’t wear a cool, sexy bra, you’re lame. But now, the stigma is: if you don’t wear a bra, you’re sloppy. The truth is, bras fucking suck. They are so uncomfortable, and stab you under the armpit all day, and awkwardly don’t fit into drawers neatly. And don’t even get me started on how expensive they can be.

Victoria’s Secret models are known for being tiny and skinny and tan and did I mention skinny? You buy bras from VS expect that you will look like that once you put on the Bombshell Bra – which is three inches of thick padding that lifts your boobs up to your chin. Their bras are created solely for the purpose of hoping to seduce someone. There is no practicality in a bra covered in red rhinestones with frills all over it. So fuck Victoria’s Secret for making me think I need one of their bullshit bras to feel sexy. Cause guess what? I don’t. The sports bras from Target are my new shit. Functional, practical, comfortable. Fuck a jeweled, frilly bra.