If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission.
Like so many others, I experienced a radical shift in how I lived my life come 2020. I was lucky enough to be healthy and employed throughout the first year of the pandemic, so the biggest hurdles I faced were boredom, isolation, and the existential dread that comes with living through a pandemic. I bought a robust collection of sweatpants, stopped wearing bras, and gained 15 pounds. I barely noticed the weight for the first year or so, until rumblings about a return to office began and I realized my braless way of life would have to take a back seat at least a couple days a week. When I outgrew my clothes, I’d just bought bigger clothes — but that same simple approach wasn’t working when I tried to re-enter the world of bras. I began my hunt for a bra that was work-appropriate but not soul-crushing in earnest — and my hunt came to an end when I discovered Lively.
The truth was, I hadn’t just gone up a clothing size or two. I developed a full-blown aversion to clothing that made me feel uncomfortable — pants so tight you had to unbutton them when you sat down, tights intended to create a “compression” effect, and other staples of outfits created for the look or photo-opp, and not for how they’d feel to sit in all day. As far back as I could remember, I’d always been told that bras were meant to fit most tightly of all. The more guidance I’d sought on finding correctly-fitting bras, the more I’d been steered towards tighter and tighter bands, assured by salespeople that it would stretch or that’s what held it in place. For my junior prom, I was fitted for a strapless bra at NYC’s famous Town Shop, and wedged into a size 30 band for my evening out. Later that night, I cried from the pain as I peeled it off and felt skin come off with it, deep welts that took days to fade left around my back.
All this is to say: A comfortable bra, a bra that wasn’t tight-fitting, was something I was afraid to even ask for, embarrassed to admit that comfort was my first priority as I remembered all the salespeople over the years who had told me it was supposed to hurt, at least a little bit. Enter: Lively, a brand that proudly prioritized comfort with slogans like “for when you don’t wanna wear a bra, but you hafta,” “sweatpants for your boobs,” or the “no-bra bra.” And while I’d certainly owned bralettes that felt like “sweatpants for your boobs” before, they’d also looked like sweatpants for my boobs, offering so little lifting and shaping that I might as well have braless. Lively was different.
Lively’s bras feel so comfy and next-to-nothing that you could fall asleep in them by accident: But on the outside, you look like a well-adjusted businesswoman who can elicit compliments beyond “wow, you look really comfortable.” Devotee of the braless lifestyle that I am, I was loath to admit just how much better certain tops could look once you re-resigned yourself to the boob-cage way of life, but post-Lively, I couldn’t deny the truth. Close-fitting t-shirts that had been off-limits since 2020 were suddenly back in play, and this time, without succumbing to an angry red line around my back at the end of the day. I even felt more comfortable in some of their bras than I did totally braless, freed from the tiresome, lightly painful bouncing whenever I picked up my pace. The Mesh Trim Bralette in toasted almond became my go-to for almost everything, and the Front-Close No-Wire Bra was my pinch hitter for super-thin fabrics that required just a little more nipple camouflaging than even this bralette could provide. With all that going back to an office entailed, wearing a bra no longer felt like a meaningful sacrifice.
The Mesh Trim Bralette
$45
Buy now
Sign Up
Related story
Get Supermodel Miranda Kerr’s Go-To Neck-Sculpting Tool For $11 Ahead of Amazon’s October Prime Day
Source: Read Full Article
