I always hated bras. From the wires, the heat they drive, restrictive feeling and the labour intensive duty to find a suitable one for every outfit, what is there not to hate.
But then came the Covid-19 restrictions when we all stayed put. The bra became a non-necessity. As much as most of us craved a return to normal, I was hoping the relaxed approach to how we carried ourselves would have somehow lasted or at least made most of us feel more comfortable with tending to our own individual needs. It felt like during this period, people finally realised the incredible effort that went into preparing ourselves to face the world on a daily basis. We also recognised that a good majority of it wasn’t really for us, but rather to either not offend people or to ensure admittance to social circles.
And I get it. This isn’t about advocating for some extreme take on what should or shouldn’t be socially acceptable but honestly, is seeing the nipples potentially being printed through a blouse really such a social catastrophe. Is seeing women topless at the beach such a crime when men are frankly the same?
This week when my in-laws visited, I felt myself resorting to always ensuring I had a robe on in the morning and feeling jittery as I listened to footsteps wondering who was on their way downstairs and if I was presentable enough. It didn’t help that my mother-in-law is queen of being put together at 6 am. I am both amazed and freaked out by anyone who has on makeup and painted lips to lounge at home. I view women who manage to keep a fresh set of manicured nails while simultaneously performing full-time house chores as somewhat of special unicorns.
But for the most part without a doubt this all makes me feel inadequate for not leaning into my ‘alleged feminine energy’ and particularly even more so by being in a post-communist country like Romania where image is everything; no one ever wants to be seen as not appeasing capitalist-like beauty standards. What is feminine energy anyway? Shouldn’t it be leaning into anything that makes you feel most comfortable and your best self? Isn’t energy more to do with mood and feeling as opposed to material adornments? If the core reason for doing all the things we do to feel feminine is really to make others more comfortable isn’t it more of a scam than feminine energy?
Perhaps it’s easier to conform to standards that we have all become accustomed to rather than really interrogate why we have such a problem with it. Perhaps discussing how sexualized women’s bodies are and how we partake in the sexualizing by either shaming them for how their boobs look or for breastfeeding appropriately in public makes us feel guilty. Maybe challenging these ideals of what women should or shouldn’t do will blow apart this mental illusion of what women should look like, leaving us with a reduced sense of self.
As much as I hated the pandemic lockdown, I miss the space, confidence and clarity it gave us to lean into ourselves.
