Update - Back pain followed by bralessness, and my boobs are looking better than ever, I think » All bra adventures

Update - Back pain followed by bralessness, and my boobs are looking better than ever, I think

So just an update since I haven't been here in a while.

One thing that I was noticing when I was trying these new bras, was that in moving from a 38 band to 34s and 36s, I found that I got some back pain. I thought it was weird, but that I would just deal with it. The pain was like a small point of tension right where the hooks are. The size of the pain was maybe the size of a coin, so I didn't think it was a big deal. But some days at work I would feel an incredible tension and I thought I was stressed, until I got home and took off my bra.

After a week or so of the tension/pain being really bad and getting worse, mixed with crazy hours at work plus multiple midterms at school, I woke up on a Monday morning for work and I almost couldn't get out of bed. The tension in my back was something I've never experienced, shooting pains, and each time the pain shot I would hunch forward more and more, until I was a hunched over right angle.The pain shot from my left shoulder blade but spread across my whole upper back.

For a week I missed work, and had to alternate between sleeping on my super soft bed and my yoga mat. The soft bed was terrible because when I needed to move, it was so soft that it was like I was trapped in my bed when I tried to move, because I had no surface to push myself against without moving my back. The yoga mat was also bad because I just can't really sleep on my back. So I spent a week so tired and in pain but barely able to sleep.

Now, what I did when I got this pain, was I went braless. Which was terrifying to me, but in this kind of pain I wasn't about to put any extra pressure on my back/shoulders. I was scared of my boobs looking weird, I was scared of my nipples showing, I was scared of my nipples being at different heights and people noticing (because they are different heights with no bra). But I settled on wearing racerback tanktops, fairly loose but form-fitting, under all my shirts. I want to emphasize how uncomfortable I was with this.

However, I did it because I don't even have big boobs. They are quite small, and I thought to myself it's absolutely crazy that I am wearing bras for aesthetics and getting pain because of them.

Now, the most interesting part to me, is that after a week or two of not wearing a bra, my boobs looked really great -- I think. Or closer to the idealized breast of current society, let's say. But they are more round, and they look firmer. I was never that happy with how my boobs looked naked, I would be so afraid of a man seeing them for the first time (or second, third, etc). But I actually think that without a bra they have gone more back to their natural state, a state I had never seen, because I started wearing a bra before I had boobs.

So now it's been like three months since the back pain disaster, and I'm still braless. I still feel awkward everyday with no bra, afraid people will judge my nipples showing, or the fact that they kind of point down., or are a bit uneven. But I may never go back. I would like to get a bralette though with little to no support, just for a bit of coverage without wearing tank tops all the time. Especially now that I think of summer where I am only in tank tops - yikes! But it's also kind of nice being braless. This is how I look, what my boobs are like on their own, and I think it has definitely helped with my body acceptance.

Filed under Bras ups and downs

Shared on Feb 03, 2014 Flag this