Your crush on Avedon is utterly endearing, and utterly understandable.

I'm old enough to remember growing up with those ads; I didn't yet wear a bra, but I saw them as nightmares, both the idea of having to wear one of those contraptions, and worse, to find yourself in public with your contraption showing.

And look at the construction of that thing...and the upward-standing-at-attention silhouette considered appropriate for women's breasts.

On the other hand, the ad is also more evidence that more was going on in the fifties and early sixties, which was an extension of the fifties, than suggested by a too facile acceptance of the unreality presented on The Donna Reed Show.

You whippersnappers have nothing so much good for making jokes with as The Incredible Living Bra, and yes, there was such a thing.

Sportsbras have saved my life. ahhhh. Ruth

to drop in here a story about the Museum of Vibrators, wouldn't it?

CD, I get the feeling from this AssociatedContent's page that this collection may be physically located somewhere in Michigan. At least the writer seems to specialize in such, which is how I got to such a page in the first place.

(sniffs as if to indicate being Above Such Things)

breast cancer? yes, i'm talking out of my ass. but still.

men, in case you don't know: many bras come with rather severe metal implements and parts. no, really! there are wires, cup supports, cages, etc. and i'm not talking about the BDSM stuff, i mean "regular" bras. which for some reason, unlike say jock supports, often seem to require all manner of metal housing and caging and whatnot. which in turn have proven (in my anecdotal experience) to be more common among breast cancer survivors.

when i buy a cute, cheap bra with metal in it, i cut out the metal parts and keep the sateen cloth supports (mock me, i don't care). there are few parts of the human body so dangerous as the female breast, such that they require full time, highly restrictive, iron/steel "supports." and it's very odd that for 0000s of years, women breast fed and got sex and otherwise functioned without housing their breasts in industrially produced and ill fitting steel enclosures. yet today- no "well dressed" woman would appear in public without her breast prisons metal enclosed corporate produced slave labor manufactured "bra." it just isn't done, in Decent society.

where does the word "bra" come from? i forget.

"natural?"

the ones in this ad, that is.

i'm looking at my boobs, and for some reason, they don't lift, separate and point fetchingly like the ones in this ad. and i'm "young" and "in shape." of course, i don't own nor do they make that model of bra anymore, so there's that. but why do men want to touch enclosed and padded, artificially arranged female flesh sacs in this manner? i'm never really sure. i bet the wires in that bra were significant, as well as uncomfortable. to force female flesh into those angles, they must have been.

women and breasts are wonderful. when they sag, when they droop, when they are wrinkled and flat. as well as when they are firm and high and just begging to be filled with postpartum milk. we can all agree on that, right? 'cause if not, this sort of constructed/artificial breast imagery is rather...essentially patriarchal. even the most "attractive" of younger women's breasts don't really look like this, without help/mutilation.

but I don't recall underwire bras coming along till later (not that i was wearing such garments at the time this one was popular; i'm not sure I was even born for that matter but certainly not pubescent.)

And I like underwires, always have. Can't think of too many other metal pieces in bras, besides the hooks 'n' eyes in back. And never heard of the "metal in bras causes breast cancer" either, unless you were being snarky in which case never mind.

Of course I never considered breasts any more particularly fragile than any other body part, certainly not as easily damaged as the dangly bits common on the male figure. I had one of my early feminist "snap" moments when my grandmother ordered me to stop playing football with the neighborhood gangs because "bruising the breast would..." I'm gonna say damage it because I don't remember if she used the word cancer or not. The implication was quite dire in any case. I said "sure thing" and told the gang we needed to move the games to a yard farther down the block. No titty cancer here yet anyway.

But as far as underwires and support go, I need lots. I'm built like my mom, 36D most of my life until menopause and gravity started sagging 'n' shrinking to set in. As far as upper body goes my two favorite, most comfortable moments of every day are when I first put the bra on in the morning and when I take it off at night. Go ...well, figure. :)

wow, there are like, so many xan!

as you are a mom, i grok why you want your life-givers to be well supported. hell yes! back pain is only the first among a long list. however-

i have several dead or survivor friends in the breast cancer dept. all of them have stories about (not limited to) metal in bras, metal in underarm deodorant, metal pressing against flesh in the name of fashion...i am *not* saying i have research in this area, but i am saying it makes a sort of sense to me. in the end, i'm am very, very sure that supporting any of my flesh in more gentle cloth is a better option than a metal cage. we're living flesh like that. all of us. and all our parts.

i stress again: metal housing for men's genitals- not a top selling concept.

That's the image I'm getting from the pointed style. Once long long ago and far far away I do recall that 'stitching' was a big feature in the 50's bra (brassiere, which means a baby's vest, later part of armor and of course that's fitting). Ruth

yep. Been there. Done that. Was a 38DD at the end of BMTS in '78. (Hella ripped, too -- a 38-28-38 figure gets you serious attention in your civilian clothes.)

Underwire bras get you "special handling" in airports. In the summer of '01 we didn't have any female TSA agents at our local flyport (yet; I was greatly relieved when the first one came on, because when the wand beeped insistently at the 2nd button of my shirt she went: "Underwire?" I said, "Front Closure" and she said, "OK." No more hauling me off to show my foundation garments to airport security !!! Yay!! Do you have any fracking idea how uncomfortable it is to wear a T-shirt UNDERNEATH a support bra, because you're flying that day?)

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!-- Xan

... now that I look closely at the image -- it was the text that I loved -- is why on earth anyone would find the cones attractive. Or was that not even the objective? Forgive my naivete, but I'm not recalling a lot in the literature about the tropic properties of pointed cones. Mnasidica is more shapely than the tender Gyrinno..

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

that one's purely inquisitional.

As in, Spanish Inquisition.

Some of the newer stuff is just as weird, but they don't write the ads this way any more. And for those of you who aren't size 0 -- Victoria's Secret's claims of "outstanding comfort"? Yeah. Believe them as you would any GOP claim about the war.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!-- Xan

... in my unbelievably painful pointy metal contraption."

Let's keep that connection in mind...

I just had to add "38DD" to the Technorati tags. Heck, why shouldn't we get the hits?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

you like what you like. sure, there are fetishes which are distasteful, and some which lead to illegal acts, but if it's just in your head and stays there, it's never "bad." so enjoy cones, or not, if that's your thing. from the link you provided:

What country girl bewitches thy heart, who knows not how to draw her dress about her ankles?

right. ankles, cones, rocking horses, whatever.

anyhoo- sarah's a hottie! heh, why did i already know that? and my god! i'm so sorry that tsa has treated you so with such an evil manner. t-shirts under your bra because they're stripping you so often? um, that's sexual harrassment, plain and simple.

i continue to hate and blame bush.

Not sure a fetish implanted by a corporate desiring machine is right, at least.

I agree with you completely as the argument is normally framed, but I'm not sure I want to frame it normally any more. What if, for example, fetishes that involve inflicting pain on others are not peripheral to the enterprise, but central?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Which is always a good day.

The TSA can kiss my shiny white yes. They fired that chick, by the way, in '04. Something about not strip-searching women regularly enough. Sexual harassment seems to be agency policy.

I love airplanes. Have for 45 years, now. One of my earliest memories was an Open House day at Reese AFB.
My standing line to my bosses, since I was 18, has always been, "You're gonna let me ride an airplane today? Cool."
They always, always, always look bemused. (I'm so damn old, in my day the Air Force used riding along on a B-52 refueling training sortie as a reward for outstanding airman of the month performance. Thirteen feet of vertical flex in those wings. No ailerons.) Reese Air Force Base is no longer there. My Air Force no longer exists. (Dale Brown's books faithfully render its demise, btw.) Not unlike my America, it has been destroyed deliberately, through ill-advised policies written and enforced by the likes of Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush.

I'm not nearly so ripped anymore, but I have now, that I didn't have in '01, bronze-brown hair well below my belt.

And the last time I flew, was that disastrous trip to Dallas in which all my stuff got stolen. I've also told you about the time the TSA in Lubbock didn't have a problem with my stuff, but the TSA in Austin found "traces of nitroglycerin" on the very same blue fanny-pack I had left home with that morning when I started back that afternoon. I think I've told you about the TSA in Houston taking away my keychain tape measure because it could double as a garrote, too, and the TSA in Harlingen mistaking an Altoids tin full of loose change in my backpack for a (forbidden!) cigarette lighter.

Need to ride an airplane for fun, again. Seriously.

If I still retained vestiges of that 18-year-old figure, I'd dress differently!

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!-- Xan