I may consider myself a feminist and love my women’s studies class just as much as the next girl, but I’m nowhere close to the nasty (and completely untrue) stereotype of feminism that most people have in mind. You know the type. The plaid-wearing, shaven-hair, bra-burning types. But then I stumbled across this article revealing the results of a study, which claim that bras actually don’t do anything they say they do — they actually make your breasts saggier. Chest support? Back pain relief? Sag prevention? All apparent lies.

According to the France-based study, which measured women’s breasts for 15 years found that women who ceased wearing their bras experienced a 7mm lift to their nipples per year as well as a fading in stretch marks and an increase in firmness. The reason? The reachers claim that bras actually inhibit the growth of supporting breast tissues and that the wearing of bras actually causes breasts to become more relient on their support, severely weakening their tissue and causes it to degrade quickly.

This also applies to bustier girls who rely on bras to support their chests and relieve the back pain that’s so common with larger breasts. The leader of the study, Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon says that bras are a “false necessity” and that “medically, physiologically, anatomically — breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity.“ According to him and many of his responsdents, giving your breasts over to gravity makes them stronger on their own, thus relieving chronic back pain. [via Counsel Heal]

The researchers warn to not take your lighters out on your lingerie collection just yet, though and says that for women who have been wearing bras regularly would not benefit from stopping and that although his initial results have supported his hypothesis about bras being a false need, that the women involved were not a complete representation of the population.

Personally, I don’t think I could ever do away with my bra collection. I’m probably one of the few women who actually prefers wearing bras, since I know so many who ditch them the second they get home (as well as trading in their day clothes almost immediately for a pair of sweats and a bun). I’ve actually been known to wear them quite frequently to bed, especially most recently during the healing process of some piercings in that area. Plus, I think I’ve spent more than enough money building up a pretty collection of lacy lingerie that I’m not willing to part with just because of a pro-gravity breast study.

Lovelies, what do you think of the study? Would you ever go bra-less?

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