I don't think I will ever forget the day that Mom bought me my first bra. I was 11 and we went to a girls' specialty clothing store. We were waited on by an impatient elderly woman who poked me with her nails as she measured my chest and helped my try on various restraints. My chest was flat as a pancake, and having someone poke and prod it was humiliating. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to run out of that store empty handed and pretend like that shopping trip never happened. Though I tried to talk Mom out of buying anything, we walked out of the store with two training bras. It was the first day of the rest of a life that I did not want to live.
I thought that the whole idea of training bras was absurd. It's not like most mothers want their children to be able to do tricks with their breasts. Those are skills reserved for the breasts of erotic dancers and porn stars. Lacking substantial flesh to support, training bras don't do much besides itch.
While I hated my training bras (and by extension, my mother for buying them), my friends, oddly enough, thought of their training bras as something akin to badges of honor. Several friends even swore that they wore theirs to bed to enhance the "growth potential" that they offered. It didn't take me long to realize that in order to be "part of the crowd," I would have to wear mine, too. I felt like I was selling my soul for social acceptance. Unfortunately, the acceptance of the girls effectively cut me off from boys. Before the training bras, I was able to travel easily between the world of boys and the world of girls and counted a number of boys among my friends. After training bras, boys became enemies who harassed me, made fun of my female body and popped my bra.
What I know now is that the bras were merely the physical embodiment of the change in expectations for adolescent girls. Literature on adolescent socialization as well as anecdotes from women in the self defense classes that I teach indicate that for the most part, pre-adolescent girls feel a sense of power in the world, are at least somewhat comfortable taking risks, and don't question having ambitions of power. The rules of womanhood crush these ambitions and squelch any resistance to the rules by imposing a fierce system of peer pressure. Preadolescent freedom is replaced by a set of rules putting girls in a double bind: wear make up, but not too much; express appropriate emotions (joy, sadness) but don't be too emotional (and never show anger); don't be too quiet or too loud; be interested in boys, but not too interested; be thin, but not too thin. In short, don't stand out. From now on, any aspiration is secondary to being female in its most narrow scope. Even those who continue their ambitions are labeled female first: girl basketball players instead of basketball players, women scientists rather than scientists, etc.
For most girls, these rules are strictly enforced. Parents and teachers tend to hold girls accountable to the gender roles. However, it is the cruelty of adolescent society, or peer pressure, that has the most impact. Girls who don't fit in often face ostracism or at least humiliation. Words like "bitch," "tease," "whore," "cow," "dog," or "dyke" serve to keep down those who fall short of the strict rules of womanhood and to discourage any would-be rebels.
Not too long ago, I was riding the bus home from campus and witnessed a group of adolescent girls enforce the gender roles. One girl in the group was joyful and began telling a story, full of dramatic details. Before she could get five sentences out, one of her peers shamed her into silence by saying, "You're talking too loud. You need to be quiet." The storyteller wilted, as if she had been beaten back into place. In my opinion, she had not been talking that loudly, and I couldn't help thinking that a group of boys never would have silenced a peer in that way. They may have told him that he was stupid, but the issue wouldn't have been about living out loud.
Through sexual harassment, adolescent boys play an even stronger role in disempowering girls. During adolescence, boys dramatically increase sexual harassment. Every harassing comment whittles away at a girl's self esteem. Sexual harassment reinforces the idea that females are less than and only hold merit as sexual objects, not as human beings. For example, when I was in high school, I remember a group of boys would lay on the floor (to look up the girl's dresses) as girls walked by, then hold up signs rating them from one to ten for their attractiveness. I tried to ignore them, but I remember living in fear of being rated. My stomach still tightens when I think about it.
Unfortunatly, the disempowering effect of training bras and the rules they represent last into adulthood. It occurs to me that this is the real purpose of training bras. They are metaphorical shackles designed to train women to be docile and compliant. As women, we can only achieve our true humanity by throwing out the rules like we threw out the training bras when they no longer fit.
This article also appears on Suite101.com.