This blogpost is a paper I wrote for my sociology class to challenge a social norm.
For my norm project, I went to work without wearing a bra. I choose to break the
norm of not wearing a bra because I wanted to challenge myself on the looking glass
self-concept. The aspects of the looking glass that I wanted to take on were my own
feelings about not wearing a bra in public. Having a larger chest size growing up my
mother always instilled in me that I had to wear a bra. As I started my college career, I
started playing fast and loose with this rule. Bras are not the most comfortable piece of
clothing. I would get indent marks in my shoulders from where the bra straps dug in.
Most of my bras would be ill-fitting due to my fluctuating weight throughout the school
year. So sometimes they would be too tight and press in on my ribs and make it hard to
breathe. So I stopped wearing them all day long. It has been a little over a year since |
have occasionally gone braless.
The other side of this going back to bra size/breast size is that my chest looks
distinctively different when I wear a bra than when I do not. I have been going braless in
other settings but this was the first time I had gone to work without a bra on. I was
feeling slightly self-conscious because sometimes my chest bounces when I walk. I
noticed I was conscious of taking my time to walk across the room and if I had to bend
over to pick something up that my breasts were not swinging too much.
I also asked all three of my supervisors that worked with me that night for their
opinion on this topic and only one replied. When I went to work, no one noticed
immediately that I was not wearing a bra. It was not until after the fact when I told them
that they knew. One of my bosses said, "I had no idea you were not wearing a bra".
She also added that she too had not worn a bra to work that evening. Given that my
boss is a first-year grad student, I also asked the opinions of some older people about
their opinion on the topic. They all had the same consensus of that it is not okay to not
wear a bra to work. One who works as an office manager said that she believes that, "It
is required and mandatory".
Also, the older people I spoke with did not see it as societal pressure and more
so as a personal choice. However, all three that I spoke with said that they believe it is
mandatory for a woman to wear a bra to work. More so if she has a larger chest.
When it comes to the third stage of the Looking Glass Self, I don't think I am
defining myself based on peoples reactions or lack thereof. I am sure that on a
subconscious level I am but I don't think I am defining myself based on their
impressions.
Whereas the younger people I spoke to saw it as a societal pressure; older
people have a more impression management view on wearing a bra in the workplace.
They see it as a part of appearance within impression management. Wearing a bra is
something you do when you are going out to the store or to work or any environment
where other people aside from close family will be present. The other topic that came
up is bra size. One person I asked who has a smaller bra size said that "I'm small
enough I could get away with wearing one to the store". Whereas someone who has a
larger chest said that one "would have to be heavily layered or running an errand".
I think our culture now as opposed to how culture was when the older people that
I talked to were my age has changed drastically in terms of this topic. It is still not a
norm today but it is more so than when they were my age. Then doing it within a
professional setting got a lot of up in arms responses from the older people that I asked.
When I asked my boss about it she said that "I'm of the mind that women shouldn't have
to wear one if they don't want to".
At the end of this project, I feel like we as a society have grown when it comes to
self-representation in the workplace. As the older generation's are starting to leave and
go into retirement, more of the younger generations are entering the workforce and
changing the culture. We will always have this idea of the looking glass self and
impression management, but through one person at a time breaking the stigma of
wearing a bra in certain environments, we can change our society. Also breaking the
stigma that people with saggy breasts have to wear a bra in any environment, including
a work environment.
This has definitely expanded my view on the bra and understanding that even
though we look at the first time you wear a bra as a right of passage moment in
American culture that doesn't mean once it is on it came come off. You can wear them
whenever you want.
This project taught me more about the difference between cultures between
generations, the idea of the looking glass self, and impression management and how
they relate to my own life. Impression management is such a subconscious thing that we don't even realize we do it sometimes. Culture is constantly changing with each
generation.
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