Nurses Reveal the Real Reasons Women Over 70 Quietly Stop Wearing Bras (Hint: They Haven’t Stopped Caring), and the Two-Part Discovery That Let One 72-Year-Old Dress Herself for Her Granddaughter’s Wedding

THE FIRST REASON: THE HOOKS ARE OUT OF REACH

Joan is 72. She taught second grade for most of her life, and she still keeps a jar of butterscotch candy by the front door.

I started seeing her after her shoulder surgery last spring. She also has arthritis in both hands.

Joan can pull on her own slacks, and she can button her blouse if she takes her time. The bra is the one thing she can’t do, so I do it every visit.

Think about where a bra fastens: a row of tiny hooks in the middle of your back, where you can’t see them. You have to reach both arms behind you, bend your shoulders back and line up the little metal hooks by feel.

That’s easy at 30. Now try it with stiff fingers and a shoulder that won’t bend back.

The CDC says nearly half of Americans 65 and older have arthritis. I believe it, because I see it in almost every house I walk into.

Before my ladies give up the bra, they give up on the hooks. They buy a front-hook bra, or they hook it at the waist and spin it around. When that gets too hard too, the bra goes in the drawer.

THE SECOND REASON: THE MARKS I SEE AT BEDTIME

When I help a woman get ready for bed, I see what her bra left behind.

There are two red grooves on top of her shoulders and a red line around her ribs where the band sat. There’s another red line under the cups where the wire pressed, and the skin under her arms is rubbed pink.

As we get older, our skin gets thinner and marks more easily, even under the same bra we’ve always worn.

Joan had grooves on both shoulders. One morning I carried her groceries in from her daughter’s car, two plastic bags with thin handles. By the time I got to her kitchen, the handles had cut red lines into my fingers.

I set the bags down and looked at my hand. Then I looked at Joan’s shoulders.

“Joan,” I said, “the bag isn’t too heavy. The handles are too thin.”

Carry a bag of groceries by its thin handles, and they dig into your fingers. Hug that same bag to your chest, and you barely feel it, because the same weight is spread out.

A bra carries you by the handles: two thin straps on your shoulders and a band around your ribs. All the weight hangs on four narrow spots from breakfast to bedtime.

Joan looked at me for a long time. “So it’s not me.”

“No, honey,” I said. “It’s the handles.”

THE THIRD REASON: IT WON’T STAY PUT

By lunch, the band has climbed up her back, and a strap slides off her shoulder every time she reaches for a cup. If the bra has a wire, it has worked its way somewhere it shouldn’t be. She spends the whole day tugging it back into place.

Part of the reason is the size. Most of my ladies are still wearing a size they picked years ago, even though their bodies have changed since.

I’m a nurse, not a researcher, so I went and looked it up. A study from 2013, in a journal called Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, checked the bras of 51 older women. More than 8 in 10 were wearing the wrong size.

A new fitting didn’t fix it for Joan, though. She got a new size with the same thin straps, and within a week the band was riding up again. The size was only part of it.

THE FOURTH REASON: SHE COUNTS THE HOURS

When I help a woman take her bra off at night, almost every one of them says the same thing: “Oh, thank goodness.”

Many of them tell me they start thinking about taking it off by the middle of the afternoon. Some unhook it in the car before they even get in the house.

I know, because I did it too. I’m 63, and for years the first thing I did when I got home from my last visit was reach up under my blouse and unhook my bra, right there by the front door.

I don’t do that anymore, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

If you spend half your day waiting to take something off, sooner or later you start asking yourself why you put it on at all.

THE REASON THEY NEVER SAY OUT LOUD

I see this one the most, and nobody talks about it.

Once a woman can’t do her own bra, somebody else has to do it for her, whether that’s her husband, her daughter or her nurse.

Most women would rather go without than ask.

Joan asked me. One morning in April, she said something I still think about.

“Peggy, the wedding is on the 14th. Can you come at 7 that morning instead of 10?”

I asked her why.

“So you can do my bra.”

She could do her own hair and shoes, but she wanted her nurse to come three hours early just to get her bra on for her granddaughter’s wedding. She didn’t want to ask Frank. They’ve been married 48 years, and she still didn’t want to ask him.

A few weeks later, I saw a big purple bruise on her hip.

She had tried to do the bra alone so she wouldn’t have to ask anyone. She hooked it at her waist, spun it around and tried to get her arms up into the straps. Her bad shoulder caught, she lost her balance, and she sat down hard on the edge of the tub.

She hadn’t told Frank or her daughter.

Then she said, very quietly, “Maybe I just won’t go. I’ll say my shoulder hurts.”

WHY GOING WITHOUT ISN’T THE ANSWER EITHER

You might be thinking, why didn’t she just skip the bra? Plenty of women do.

Joan had tried that. For Easter dinner at her daughter’s house, she left the bra off and wore her heaviest cardigan, buttoned all afternoon in a warm kitchen. She sat with her arms folded and didn’t get up to help with the dishes. When they took the family picture, she stood in the very back.

“I felt like I came in my nightgown,” she told me.

I see the same thing in a lot of homes. Going without takes care of the hooks, and then other things start to go wrong.

• Nothing holds her, so her blouses don’t hang right, and she feels undressed.
• She won’t answer the door until she finds a sweater.
• She wears a cardigan buttoned to the chin in July.
• Some of my ladies tell me their neck and shoulders feel it by the end of the day.
• Little by little, she skips church, lunch with friends and the grandkids’ ball games.

One of my ladies asks me to bring in her mail so the neighbor won’t see her.

When a woman stops wearing a bra, the bra is usually only the first thing she gives up.

THE TWO THINGS SHE NEEDED AT THE SAME TIME

That night I sat at my kitchen table and wrote it out on the back of an envelope.

Every woman I visit is choosing between two bad options.

A bra holds her up, but it hooks behind her back and hangs her from thin handles.

With no bra, there’s nothing to hook, but nothing holds her up, either.

So she has to pick: hurt, or feel undressed.

Joan needed two things, and she needed both at once.

One: nothing to fasten. No hooks and no clasp, just something she could put on by herself with the hands and shoulder she has now.

Two: be held without the handles. She needed the weight carried wide, like that bag hugged to your chest, instead of hung from two thin straps and a tight band.

Joan and I had already tried a lot of things. Each one gave her one of the two, and none gave her both.

• A front-hook bra. The hooks were in front, but they were so tiny her fingers couldn’t line them up.
• A bra extender. It gave her more room, and then the loose band rode up her back even faster.
• A new fitting. She got a new size with the same thin straps.
• A pull-on sports bra. No hooks, but it was so tight she got stuck with it rolled up around her shoulders. I had to peel it down for her.
• A soft bralette. It felt nice until lunch, but by the afternoon it wasn’t holding her up at all.

I didn’t think anything did both. Then I thought of Edna.

THE ONE WOMAN I NEVER HAD TO HELP

Edna is 81. Out of every woman I visit, she’s the one I have never had to help with a bra.

I figured she had stopped wearing one, like so many of my ladies. But Edna never wore a cardigan in July. She answered her own door and went to church every Sunday.

One afternoon, I finally asked her.

She laughed and pulled her collar over a little to show me a wide, flat strap.

“My daughter-in-law found it,” she said. “It’s a tank top with the bra built right in. I pull it on over my head. I haven’t hooked a bra in two years.”

It’s called the Susie’s Built-in Bra Comfort Tank.

It’s a long, soft tank with molded cups built into the front and wide, flat straps. There are no hooks, no wire, no band and no clasp. You pull it on over your head, and you’re done.

That’s both things at once. There’s nothing to fasten, and the cups, the wide straps and the snug body share the weight, so no thin strap has to carry it alone. It’s like hugging the bag to your chest instead of carrying it by the handles.

The fabric is 80% nylon and 20% spandex, so it stretches and moves with you. It’s cut long, so you tuck it into your slacks and it stays down.

There’s no band size or cup size to get wrong, either. You pick your size the way you’d pick a T-shirt, from S all the way up to 6XL. It comes in 8 colors.

It won’t push you up like an underwire push-up bra, and Edna says that’s fine by her.

“I don’t need to be pushed up,” she told me. “I need to be held and left alone.”

I called Joan’s daughter from Edna’s driveway.

WHAT HAPPENED OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS

Joan’s daughter ordered three that night: black, nude and burgundy.

Day 1. I got there at 10, like always. Joan met me at the door, already dressed. “Over my head,” she said. “Sitting on the bed. All by myself.” It was the first visit in months that I didn’t do her bra.

Day 3. I check her shoulder at every visit because of the surgery. The red grooves were lighter than I’d seen them since I started coming.

Day 6. It was 84 degrees, and she went to the grocery store with her daughter in a short-sleeve blouse with no cardigan. She tucked the tank into her slacks, and when she got home, it was still right where she put it.

Day 9. She told me she forgot to take it off until bedtime. “Peggy, I didn’t count the hours once.”

Day 14. She called me about the wedding. “You don’t need to come early on the 14th. Come at your usual time. I’ll be dressed.”

On the morning of the wedding, the only help Joan needed was Frank zipping up the back of her dress, same as he’s done for 48 years.

On Monday she showed me her pictures from the reception. There’s Joan on the dance floor with her granddaughter, both arms up in the air. And there she is in the family picture, right in the middle of the front row.

“I didn’t think about my bra all day,” she told me.

I bought three for myself that same week, and I wear the tank under my scrubs now. When I get home, I walk right past the spot by the front door where I used to unhook my bra.

I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE

Since then, I’ve told a lot of my ladies about it and heard from plenty of women who wear it. Here are a few of them in their own words.

THE QUESTIONS MY LADIES ASK ME FIRST

Whenever I tell a woman about it, she asks me the same few things. Here are my answers.

“I already stopped wearing a bra. Why would I go back?”

You wouldn’t be going back. There are no hooks, no band and nothing to reach behind you for. It’s a tank top you pull on over your head. You get the support back without the part that made you quit.

“Isn’t this just a cami with a shelf bra?”

No. A cheap shelf cami has one thin strip of elastic across the chest, and most women still wear a bra under it. This one has real molded cups built into the front and wide, flat straps. It’s made to be the bra.

“How is it different from a sports bra?”

A sports bra has a tight band that rolls up when you pull it on. Joan got stuck in one. This is a whole tank with no band, so there’s no tight strip to wrestle over your shoulders and down your back.

“Will it hold me if I’m big up top?”

For a normal day of errands, church or lunch with friends, yes. It gives you shape and holds you in place without a wire. It won’t push you up the way an underwire push-up does. It comes all the way up to 6XL.

“Can I put it on with a bad shoulder or stiff hands?”

Yes. It goes on over your head, and there is nothing to fasten. My tip: sit on the edge of the bed to put it on, like Joan does.

“Will it ride up?”

Not if you tuck it in. It’s cut long so it tucks into your slacks and stays down. Untucked, it can creep up when you bend over.

“How do I wash it?”

Wash it on gentle, in cold water. Lay it flat to dry, or tumble dry on low. The cups are built in, so there’s nothing to take out first.

“What if I get the size wrong?”

Tell Susie’s within 90 days, and they’ll ship you the right size free. It’s a size exchange, not a refund.

I DID THE MATH ONE NIGHT

One night I opened my own bra drawer and counted nine bras. I only ever wore two of them. Every other one was bought to fix the one before it.

Then I did the other math. Most women need three: one to wear, one in the wash and one clean in the drawer.

Right now, Susie’s is running Buy 2, Get 1 Free, so the third one costs you nothing, and shipping is free in the US. You can mix the colors any way you like.

I don’t know how long they’ll keep that going. If your size is in stock today, that’s when I’d get it.

THE WAY I SEE IT NOW

You have two choices.

You can close this page and keep going the way you are. Tomorrow you reach behind your back for the same tiny hooks, or you wait for someone to come do them, and then you count the hours until you can take it off. At night, you see the same red grooves in the mirror. Or you leave the bra in the drawer and keep the cardigan on in July.

Or you can try the thing Edna showed me. Pull it on over your head, tuck it in and go about your day. If the size is wrong, they send you the right one free.

I’ve watched a lot of women stop going places because getting dressed got too hard. Joan almost skipped her granddaughter’s wedding.

Peggy

P.S.

Joan still keeps her old bras in the drawer. She says she can’t throw out something that cost that much. But she hasn’t hooked one since the wedding.

P.P.S. Remember the lady who asked me to bring in her mail? Her daughter ordered her three. Last week I pulled into her driveway, and she was already out at the mailbox.

Buy 2, Get 1 Free. Free US shipping. 90-Day Perfect Fit Guarantee.