Having read in last week’s New Yorker that the US army has a new, exhaustively tested bra for female combatants, I’m interested, of course. The Army Tactical Bra, which is fire-resistant and designed to “reduce the cognitive burden on the wearer” is the fruit of quizzing 18,000 female soldiers on their bra experiences, and crafted in collaboration with a range of cantilevering experts. It’s far too confidential for much brass tacks information to be divulged but I did learn the model the journalist tried (there are four in total) had a zip fastening, and she felt “cozily swaddled”. A little disappointing: I’d hope for a concealed dagger, cyanide capsules and Kevlar at the least – something Q might whip out if Bond had a bust.
But I’m used to bra disappointment. Like most women, I have measured out my life in brutally unsatisfactory cups. The “cognitive burden” is real: I’ve gone almost the full Kübler-Ross curve attempting to find satisfactory underpinnings. There were the expensive, self-deluding “fashion” bra years of sadly trying to shove myself into inadequate triangles of fancy fabric that create a horrifying quadraboob. Then when I moved to London in my 20s, I took myself hopefully to Rigby & Peller (corsetières to her late Maj until owner June Kenton’s memoir reportedly caused palace displeasure, though come on, who could resist titling something Storm in a D-Cup?). I hoped to find something non-hideous in my non-standard size and remember tentatively holding up pretty fragments of lace and silk for the fitting expert, who wordlessly exchanged them for something sturdily beige. Decades of further crushed hopes followed, from orthopaedic-looking and instantly grey nursing bras to slippery straps and expensive Italian engineering, which much like the car equivalent, turned out to be all style and no substance.
Admittedly, bras are evolving, supposedly as a result of WFH liberating us from underwiring and indeed, wearing a bra at all. It’s a brave, baffling new world of bralettes and bandeaus, sheer sexy mesh and seamless fits-everybody (“I’ll be the judge of that,” I hiss at the Instagram adverts, hitching my matron shelf, Les Dawson style). But I’m not sure we’re there yet with the holy grail of bra comfort, style and support: model Charli Howard still posts photos of the marks left behind when she takes hers off, like an angry red ghost bra, captioned “freedom”.
So until the US army lets us all in on the secret, I suppose I’ll just keep doing what I do now, and what, I suspect, most British women end up doing: sleepwalking into M&S and buying whatever Rosie Huntington-what’s-her-face tells me to.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
