Why do push-up bras feel so right again?
image via @charli_xcx/instagram
words by Constance McDonald
“Sexiness is whatever you want.”
All Euro-summer, the girls were in my phone. I scrolled through them. A stone street in Italy, a girl in a white tank, the lacy edge of a pink bra riding high above the tank’s scooped neck. Slide two is an Aperol Spritz (it’s always an Aperol Spritz).
At Coachella this year, fun push-up bras abound. PinkPantheress wore a custom Victoria’s Secret tartan bra on stage, Addison Rae wore a glossy red vinyl one by Agent Provocateur, and when Olivia Rodrigo popped on stage to join her, she wore a pink leather ruffle-bow bra by R and M Leathers.
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From pop culture to high fashion, exposed bras are everywhere you look. This Milan Fashion Week, Lera Potomova walked Diesel SS27 in a silk cowl-neck top that hung below a yellow lace bra. For Fendi, Maria Grazia Chiuri sent out lace dresses with bras peeking over the neckline.
My For You page on TikTok is filled with short clips overlaid with text like: ‘every girl needs a little lace push-up bra’ and ‘me convincing everyone that the only thing you need is a lace bra and tank in every colour. that’s it.’
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“Your bra is showing”
My first bra was a thinly padded, underwire-less training bra by Girls Room covered in pink and purple butterflies. Then, I prematurely graduated to a hand-me-down Hey Sister lace one with a tiny bow at the centre. I packed them for ski camp, and I wore them to school socials with borrowed Supré body-con dresses and Impulse ‘Vanilla Kisses’ body spray.
Straps were not to be seen. If push came to shove, ‘invisible’ straps could be purchased and swapped out with your regular bra strap. But they would dig into your shoulder, cutting a groove you could rest a pencil in, no matter what weight of boob it was hoisting. In summer it would mist up against the skin like a bathroom mirror after a shower.
For the next 10 years in my free time, I have gone bra-less. At most a bralette. In a charity shop in Vietnam, earlier this year, I found a pink 15-year-old Victoria’s Secret Bombshell, the highly padded push-up bra that famously promised to add two cup sizes. Two! I bought it, tried it on and damn, it feels kinda cool to have a rack.
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So why are we back to the boobs, after an ass-dominant decade? Maybe it’s the admin. Endless squats or permanent body projects via medical tourism horror stories. Boobs are already there, or if they are not, are only an op shop or Bendon visit away.
In the two-dollar fill-a-bag op shop bins here in Dunedin, the Mother of all push-up bras came to me. It has jelly inside the cups. It is heavy like an overnight toddler’s nappy. The jelly is the same stuff they use in mousepads for your wrist to lean on. I pressed my thumb into the cup and watched it ripple back. I was hooked.
I’m a modest B cup (it’s fine, don’t cry for me. I’ve had my day in the double D sun), and Miss Gel Cups lets me dip in! I wore it out for the first time this week, under a red singlet, its lace peeking over the neckline, when I went to meet my friend for a beer. I was not cool about it. I kept looking down. I admitted and introduced its presence in the first five minutes of conversation.
I think I’m dressing like the women who I found beautiful when I was small. I think of my mum and her friends all dressed up for their fortieths. Their eyeliner winged out, lurex tight tops over breast-fed-four-children boobs, platform sandals, wide-leg jeans with their pockets full of hips, and champagne flutes full of Lindauer.
For one night, in that push-up bra, I can feel like the silhouette-of-a-woman decal on the back window of a souped-up bogan Holden. Then I can take it off.
Sexiness is whatever you want. When I’m bra-less, wearing my pointelle cami as thin as prosciutto, I can feel my nipples grazing against it, sexy. When I’m wearing that fucked up gel push-up bra and a cashmere off-the-shoulder jumper and my straps are showing, sexy. Whatever, it is all hot if you want it to be.
So let that lace rise above your cami! And when your aunty leans in at the Christmas table and whispers, ‘Your bra is showing’, say: ‘I know. It’s cute, aye!’
For more on the push-up bra revival, head here.
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