The Bra
By Sally Watkinson
Do you love bras? I do. I have a whole drawer-full of them. Lacy cups, stretchy straps - irresistible! My love affair with bras goes back a long way.
When I first tried on my sister's clothes as a teenager, perhaps the most interesting - and pleasurable - garment was the bra.
Flat chested, I had no real need to wear it, but didn't consider omitting it as I dressed. The web of straps was completely alien to the clothes in my own drawers. That, in itself, was exciting.
Slipping the straps over my shoulders was no problem. Then, I tried to fasten it behind my back. The hook and eye seemed to occupy that area of the back where one can never scratch an itch - I tried reaching from below, I tried reaching down from above. Neither did the least little bit of good.
I struggled with the bra for ages and, eventually, I gave in. Unlooping my arms from the shoulder straps, I turned the bra back-to-front and fastened it around my chest. Then, I swivelled it back and wriggled my arms back through the shoulder straps. Admitting defeat on fastening the bra behind my back was the most disappointing part of trying on my sister's clothes. I had a sense of cheating, of not doing the thing properly.
On subsequent occasions - and there were, of course, many of them - I tried repeatedly to engage the elusive hook and eye behind my back. The struggle became a regular feature of my dressing.
That was over half a lifetime ago. many things have changed since then, and - not least - I have changed. No longer do I struggle to fix the bra behind my back. Without thinking about it, I fasten my bra in a similar way to that first attempt. I do it rapidly, with more assurance and usually without geting the straps tangled - but the method remains much the same.
Over the years, I must have seen a number of women putting on their bras, but, oddly, cannot recall how any of them managed it. They include a wife to whom I was married for ten years. Perhaps my teenage feeling of putting the bra on wrongly placed some psychological block in the way of taking note of the methods real women used?
Bras do not have to fasten at the back, although that remains the standard way of fixing them. Front fastening bras exist - indeed, I have one in my collection. I haven't seen one, but I know side fastening bras have also been made.
Apart from front, side and back fastening, the fourth possibility is not to fasten at all. I also have a bra with no breaks in the straps, which I put over my head, as though it was a camisole. It's made from a stretchy fabric but - in spite of that - of all the many bras I own, it is the most difficult to put on.
I suppose my teenage self would have liked that, but would have regretted its lack of hooks and eyes - so different from the ways in which male clothes were allowed to fasten. The bra without hooks and eyes hugs me delightfully - and it is very pretty - but I don't wear it very often.
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