Since we are celebrating 100 years of the bra, I thought I would continue my 7 thing series by including some interesting, and possibly little-know facts about the bra.
1.Women have used bra-like devices, designed to lift, separate and restrain their breasts since as early as 2000BC.
There have also been times when it has been fashionable to wear a band or other device to flatten the breasts.
But the fashion now is really for comfort - with a bit of sex thrown in!
2. The average woman owns between 9 and 16 bras.
And a disturbing bit of reasearch reveals that women in Britain only wash their bras 6 times a year! Or wears them 7 times before washing!
I'm sure that's not the case in Australia!
3. 80% of women wear bras that do not fit them properly.
But beware because a badly fitting bra can cause headaches, back pain and radiating pain down the arm.
4. Over the past 15 years the average bra size has gone up from a 34B to 36C.
That's one to make the guys happy : )
5. In 1991 a woman was killed by lightning which struck the underwire in her bra.
6. In October 2009, Somalia’s hard-line Islamist group Al-Shabaab forced women in public to shake their breasts at gunpoint to see if they wore bras, which they called "un-Islamic". Those found to be wearing a bra were publicly whipped because bras are seen as "deceptive" and to violate their interpretation of Sharia law.
7. Bras have been designed that detect cancer, detect radiation in case of a nuclear attack, to deter the wearer from smoking and to alert police in case of a mugging attack.
References:
nationalgeographic
wikipedia
telegraph.co.uk
