“Padded Bras are the Devil’s Cushions” says The Islamic Council of Ideology.

Wow. Apparently Islamic scholars and I are as one on an issue. This must happen very seldom. I mean, my studies of the Qu’ran have been elementary at best.

However I have a sneaking suspicion that whilst our solutions might have been the same, our workings have been very different. I doubt that very many of these learned scholars have felt the dread that comes with hoisting ones lallies into a push up cup, certain in the knowledge they won’t be released from their foam and lacy prison for another fourteen hours. And that’s if it’s a short day. And if you can some how slip  it off under your shirt in the staff car park, without the MD thinking you’re rubbing one out a quick one on company property because of the look of sheer bliss on your face…

I just don’t understand why bras have to part of the modern modest woman’s daily dress. Even for the small breasted. Somehow, the minute there’s the possibility of someone seeing an outline of  an actual human breast, nipple and all, we get all Victorian. Odd, when you consider you can scarcely move without a nipple poking you in the eye from a billboard, or seeing a woman in a push up bra and top cut to her navel. Yet, somehow, we’ve never been so offended by the sight of real breasts.

I am as close as one can get to flat chested as it’s possible to be as an adult woman, without being an actual 11 year old boy, yet I still feel made to feel the deep depths of self disgust  that I have a body part capable of lactating  if I forgo a bra and it suddenly it looks like I’m smuggling skittles (the sweets, not the bowling apparatus…) down my sweater.

But somehow it’s ok to go out with virtually everything but your nipples covered. As much milky white demi globe as you please! But, ladies, keep those disgusting breast-warts out of our eye line… maybe even get them surgically removed? Barbie didn’t have nipples, just sayin’…

It’s another weird things about how we see women’s bodies, like the growing mainstream disgust at actually having a pair of labia minora or pubes or anything that makes you look like an actual human being instead of a life size doll.

Apart from work situations – when I’ll readily admit that no one needs to see anybody’s nipples – I’m going to give up on my bras; they’re too uncomfortable to wear daily to save other people’s embarrassment.