| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
Wendy wrote this article in response to a question some time ago. Some years ago she posted it to the USENET newsgroup alt.fashion.crossdressing where a number of us thought it was great and should not be lost. Wendy has changed e-mail providers several times since and unfortunately I no longer have a good e-mail address for her.
As my site provider, GeoCities has given me lots of space for my site, I volunteered to load this to the World Wide Web for convenience in referencing its content, and to preserve it. Please note that the content of this set of pages is the intellectual property of Wendy, and should not be copied or distributed to other sites or used for any commercial purpose without Wendy's permission.
E-mail me -- I'd be glad to accept and incorporate any suggestions for improvement. Blame me for typographical errors, the pictures at the top of the pages, and anything else you see wrong with this work.
Cindy's Cleavage may have moved... This part of Cindy's information can also be found at this link which has Cindy's information. Tora's Cleavage pages have similar information with photos, too. These pages have some great and well illustrated ideas about suggestions on improving your image. You might want to check out her site.
This discourse is meant to summarize and organize the information I have obtained mostly from personal experimentation, but also includes data acquired from the internet as regards brassiere history and evolution. It is, in a sense, a how-to manual almost as much as it is a how-come manual.
I believe something I once found on a bra website, that the brassiere is arguably the most feminine of all womens clothing. Very possibly this is true due to the rather small number of men who can naturally wear a bra, and an even smaller number of men who actually want to. It is, very strictly speaking, a feminine article of clothing, verbotten to men for the most part, and it is very socially unacceptable for a man to be caught or seen wearing a bra, or, for that matter, even particularly interested in bras.
For those of us men fascinated with bras from the instant we first saw one, or realized its purpose, the bra is far more than a device for covering a womans breasts, or preventing them from moving about when a woman moves about. It is one of the sexiest articles of clothing in a womans bag of tricks, perhaps even the sexiest, for the reasons stated above. Garter belts, girdles, nylons, heels, skirts, dresses, corsets, slips and gowns all can be worn by men with little physical difficulty. But most brassieres require at least some contributing mass to flesh out its cups, and most men cannot provide much in this regard.
Enamored, perhaps even obsessed with the forbidden subject of womens undergarments from an early age, the bra I found to be always aloof, out of reach and impractical simply because I had nothing to fill the cups with, except socks, tissues and various other sundry filler materials. Wearing falsies does not necessarily constitute wearing a bra. The ultimate achievement, filling some substantial cups substantially, is the ultimate goal and is the only means of achieving the satisfaction of really wearing a bra. Sure, you can wear a padded bra, but that is not nearly the same, in fact the very knowledge that you are cheating subtacts substantially from any pleasure you may get from achieving some chest altitude this way.
No. The real ticket is to fill real cups with real breast mass, to feel yourself gathered, projected and held aloft in a fine bra. That is satisfaction, and at an almost primitive level. This is perhaps difficult to understand for some women, who find it annoying that they have to wear a bra in the first place, that it is a burden. I can certainly understand that, as I feel it is a burden to be limited to the very narrow range of acceptable male clothing alternatives.
Whereas women may still feel limited in their lifes' choices, they no longer have limitations when it comes to clothing. It is perfectly acceptable to see a woman dressed almost precisely in a man's clothing. Perhaps the only thing I have never seen a woman wear is a pair of wing tips. [ed. note... I have, though] It is almost de riguer for most women I have bedded to don one of my shirts for sleeping, or knocking about the place.
If I tried one of their blouses (assuming it would fit), things would always get dicey if I kept it on but for a few humorous moments as if in protest.
Precisely the opposite is true for men. Except for a brief period in the 70s, when certain fashion trends made things like bell-bottoms and platform shoes semi-possible for men, modern day men are better off not being caught dead in anything that is remotely feminine in appearance. But then, nobody ever said it had to be fair. I have never tried to put on a womans bra in the presence of a woman. I imagine the atmosphere would chill immediately, and sex would no longer be an option as I would immediately be labeled a pervert. Perhaps I am.
However, using that logic, most women, by that very gender clothing specific logic, would have to accept the same label (get out of those pants, those shoes, socks etc. etc. before you object here or you must suffer the additional label of hypocrite).
But, for a moment, think of the bewildering variety of bras that have been made. And, keep in mind, that if historians are correct, the brassiere, as we know it, has only been around for about a hundred years. It evolved well towards the end of the Victorian period, perhaps even after according to most accounts, and in its first iteration, bore almost no resemblance to anything we would call a bra today. Considering that the human female breasts have not undergone a dramatic resizing during most of recorded history, one has to wonder how comfortable the alternatives to brassieres were before there were any brassieres.
From a purely physics perspective, todays over the shoulder boulder holder is an eminently practical device for providing external stability to an unsprung mass. Beyond the brutal physics comes style, and cunning style at that. They do not have to be as becoming as they are to do their job of supporting the breasts. But, as with all inventions, they have evolved to provide more than just the one function. Instead of just simply supporting the breast, they now function to gather and project it further than it naturally would extend away from the body, shape it into a more esoterically pleasing form, or minimize same etc. etc. They now exist in a bewildering variety of forms and functions, however the present state of the industry is not necessarily the best it has been, as my personal research indicates, but that is a mater of personal perspective.
And here is where we will jump off into the manifesto. As I mentioned at the outset, this thesis is intended to document and preserve mostly personal experiementation with the wearing of a bra. I feel it is successful as I can now wear a C cup perfectly, and a D cup in certain brands and styles. It is the most satisfying experience I have ever known, short of mastering 5 inch high-heels, but thats another story. I have incorporated the results of my research into lessons learned through time.
Go back to the Bra Manifesto Introduction
E-mail comments to Dee.
Get your own Free Home PageVisits to this page: