I used to wear bras like this and now I wear bras like this!
Hey everyone, I’m Dana and you’re watching Wanted Adventure Living Abroad.
Last year I made a video "How My Clothes Have Changed in Germany," and in that video I mentioned
that the kind of bras I wear has changed too.
Specifically I said…
In the U.S., or at least in South Florida, I grew up feeling like everything in the world
around me -- TV, ads, billboards, and so much more, it was always telling me, it was screaming
in my face: bigger boobs are better.
And so in Florida I wore a lot of push-up bras, and they gave me that look that I wanted,
or the look that I felt like I was being told I needed to have, but they were so, so uncomfortable.
And not right away, but after living in Germany for a little while, I grew to feel more comfortable
about not wearing push-up bras.
The whole "your boobs have to be as big as possible" sentiment didn’t seem to be pushed
in my face so much from all angles here in Germany.
At least to me, it felt like in Germany it was more like, you are who you are.
Big boobs, small boobs, whatever; you are who you are and that's okay.
At least that’s the feeling that I've gotten here in Germany.
And in today’s video I’d like to go a little bit more into that.
Okay so, when I first moved to Germany I wore push-up bras and padded bras a lot.
Then at some point I started more frequently rotating in some bras that weren’t push-up bras,
they were way less padded, but they still had underwire and forming design.
And then around two or three years ago, I began finding myself starting to wear even
those less padded underwire bras less and less often opting instead for, what is for me personally,
a much more comfortable option: bras like this.
And when I say much more comfortable, I guess what I mean is that they are much less uncomfortable.
Here is a photo of my shoulder after wearing a push-up bra for just a few hours. Ouch.
And here is a photo of my shoulder after wearing one of the newer kind of bras that I have
been wearing all day long.
Wearing push-up bras I spend the whole time with the straps digging into my shoulders,
pulling on my body.
But so if push-up bras are so physically uncomfortable to me
why did I ever start wearing them in the first place?
Well, as I mentioned in the clip from the other video, I grew up basically feeling like
the message bigger breasts are better and that it was important for me to strive
for bigger breasts, I felt like it was being pushed at me from all angles, so I guess it’s not
really so much of a surprise that it didn’t take long for me to start trying to embody
that sentiment that I had internalized.
And I even at times I started to feel somewhat self-conscious, insecure, like I was not enough
with the natural size of my breasts.
I can remember starting to wear padded bras as young as 14 years old.
I basically went from not really wearing a bra at all to then after that very quickly
starting to wear padded bras, and I was so aware of the bigger breasts are the ideal
message that I was getting that I can even remember wearing a padded bra under my sports
bra when I was in gym class at age 14.
Now that’s not to say that at age 14 I started wearing padded bras and that was it, I wore
push-up bras every single day for, like, the next 10 years or something like that. No.
Depending on the outfit, what I was doing, what I was feeling, you know, I mean, it varied.
But push-up bras were a staple of my wardrobe and there were definitely many times in those
years that I can look back on now and remember that wearing a push-up bra made me feel more
confident, more secure, bolder.
And not wearing a push-up bra I can recall did sometimes make me feel insecure.
I was sometimes feeling nervous to go out without that push-up bra on, not feeling confident
or good enough with my breasts as they were.
And I’m not really sure exactly what the tipping point was.
I don’t know exactly what led to my shift from padded bras to barely a bra and really
more like a cropped undershirt than a bra at all.
As I mentioned in the other video, living in Germany I did come to feel more comfortable
with my breasts as they are.
Compared to South Florida, living here in Germany I feel like there are a lot of little
and big things that have added up to make me feel more comfortable with my breasts as they are.
But I think another part of it was that I got tired of having a least some of my self-confidence
wrapped up in what bra I was wearing.
I got sick of that feeling that I had sometimes that I had to wear a push-up bra to feel good
about myself or to feel confident in the world.
If I wanted to wear one that was fine.
But I didn’t like feeling like I needed to wear one in order to feel confident in
myself or worry that other people wouldn’t like me as much or they would judge me or
something like that if I didn’t wear a particular kind of bra and make my breasts look a particular
kind of way.
And when I started the Living Abroad series on this YouTube channel four years ago,
I was still wearing push-up bras on a pretty regular basis, and I wore them for many of
the videos at the beginning even though the way I sat in a chair back then for the videos,
the kind of chair that I was sitting in and how I was sitting to film the videos with
the tight restrictive push-up bra on I found sometimes made it hard for me to talk.
Like I found it sometimes hard for me to really catch a full breath, bring in a full breath
of air and say those long sentences when they were several one right after the other.
And I can remember as soon as the video was done I was usually really happy to get out
of the push-up bra and be able to, like, breathe freely again and talk freely again.
Having trouble breathing just so that my breasts would look bigger because I felt insecure
to go on camera without the push-up bra.
I felt insecure to go on camera with my breasts just as they were.
And I think I finally realized that.
And at some point I was like no, that doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t want that.
And so overnight I got rid of all of my padded and underwire bras and I had total confidence
all of a sudden to wear only bras, you know, that looked like this and I never looked back!
Uh no. First of all, I still have lots of padded and non-padded underwire bras, and I still
do wear them sometimes.
Fellow bra wearers out there watching this, I think you know what I’m talking about
when I say that some shirts and some dresses just need a particular kind of bra to make them work.
Different clothes need different bras.
And sometimes I still want to wear a push-up bra or whatever other kind of bra to achieve
a certain kind of look that I'm going for, and of course that’s totally fine.
I don’t have to pick one or the other. That I can only wear this or that. No.
I think I'm just trying to get to a point where I feel like I'm making the choice
for me and not for anyone else out there.
So my question for you is: What’s been your experience with clothing and self-confidence?
Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Want to watch another video? Here are two.
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