FREE THE NIPPLE. BURN THE BRA. APOLOGISE TO OUR SPINES.

There are few things in modern life as quietly infuriating as the social expectation that women should strap themselves into uncomfortable, restrictive underwear every single day for the emotional comfort of strangers. Not safety. Not warmth. Not even practicality. Comfort. Specifically men’s comfort. Because somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that a woman’s nipple is a public threat, while a man’s nipple is background furniture.

Free the nipple is often framed as provocative, attention seeking, or extreme. As if asking to exist in our own bodies without pain is a radical act. As if the real issue is skin rather than the decades of conditioning that taught us to monitor our bodies constantly. Sit like this. Cover that. Smooth this out. Adjust yourself so no one else has to feel a feeling.

Bras are marketed as support. As empowerment. As shaping tools that will somehow make life better. But for a huge number of women, bras are not supportive. They are painful. They dig into shoulders, compress ribs, aggravate back pain, restrict breathing, and turn existing chronic pain into something sharper and more persistent. And yet we are still expected to wear them in offices, at family events, at school gates, and sometimes even at home when visitors arrive. As if being comfortable in your own house is somehow inappropriate.

I have back pain exactly where a bra band would sit. Deep, persistent pain that flares when anything presses against it for too long. I stopped wearing bras years ago, not as a political statement but because my body asked me to. Because pain is not a moral obligation. And yet, despite not wearing a bra, I still feel the ridiculous need to check mirrors, adjust tops, layer clothing, and subtly hunch forward just in case the outline of my nipples is visible. I have put more effort into hiding a normal body part than most men have ever put in.

Because men’s nipples are allowed to exist. They show through shirts. They poke through gym tops. They are visible in workwear and school uniforms and no one cares. They are not labelled distracting. They are not considered unprofessional. No one asks men to pad them, hide them, or consider how others might react. The nipple itself is not the issue. Ownership is.

We are told this is about decency, but decency has always been a moving target that lands squarely on women’s bodies. Decency once meant ankles should not be visible. Then knees. Then shoulders. Now we pretend the line is nipples, as if that is a fixed, natural boundary rather than a social choice. A choice that just happens to inconvenience women and benefit men who would rather not confront their own sexualisation of women’s bodies.

Nipples are not inherently sexual. They are functional body parts. They exist on all genders. They feed babies. They respond to cold. They exist whether we like it or not. What makes women’s nipples sexual is not biology but conditioning. A cultural decision reinforced by advertising, pornography, film, and fashion, all of which have spent decades presenting women’s bodies as consumable objects rather than neutral human forms.

And instead of asking men to unlearn that reflex, we ask women to manage it for them. Wear a bra. Wear padding. Wear darker colours. Layer up. Stand differently. Sit differently. Think about how you look from every angle. All of this mental labour so that someone else does not have to experience a moment of discomfort or arousal or confusion.

The conversation around bras often ignores disabled women, chronically ill women, neurodivergent women, and anyone whose body simply does not tolerate restriction well. Back pain, rib pain, sensory issues, hormonal swelling, skin conditions, and fatigue all make bras far more than a mild inconvenience. They can be genuinely disabling. And yet opting out is treated as lazy, rebellious, or unprofessional rather than sensible.

There is a darker version of this same entitlement that shows up even when women take extreme, medical steps to escape pain. It has been widely discussed that when women go for breast reduction surgery, even with clear medical reasons like chronic back pain, nerve damage, skin infections, or mobility issues, male surgeons frequently do not reduce breasts to the size the woman explicitly requested, even when that size was agreed in pre operative consultations. The justification is rarely medical. It is aesthetic. It is rooted in the idea that women’s breasts and nipples are inherently sexual and therefore should not be made too small, regardless of how much pain they cause. Even in an operating theatre, with a woman unconscious on the table, male preference can override female need. A woman can be desperate enough to undergo surgery and still be told, through action rather than words, that her body is not really hers to decide. That her comfort is secondary to what someone else thinks looks acceptable.

Workplace dress codes are a particular offender here. Many do not explicitly state that women must wear bras, but the expectation is implied and enforced socially. A visible nipple outline is considered a violation, while visible male nipples are ignored entirely. This is not neutrality. It is discrimination dressed up as professionalism. Professionalism that somehow requires women to endure discomfort while men are allowed to simply exist.

What makes this especially exhausting is that many women are not even comfortable with their nipples being sexualised. We are not trying to provoke. We are trying to buy groceries, answer emails, walk the dog, and live our lives without pain. The sexual meaning is projected onto us and then used as justification to control us. It is a neat little loop that always ends with women doing the work.

The irony is that bras do not even reliably do what they are supposed to do. They do not prevent nipples from showing. They do not stop breasts from moving. They do not magically create modesty. They simply redistribute discomfort and place the responsibility squarely on the wearer. And we accept this because we have been taught to see our discomfort as normal and other people’s feelings as more important.

Free the nipple is not about forcing anyone to go braless. It is about removing the obligation. It is about choice without judgement. It is about acknowledging that pain is not a requirement of womanhood and that modesty should not be defined by whether a stranger can vaguely identify a body part through fabric.

It is also about honesty. About admitting that the reason women are expected to hide their nipples is because men have not been required to examine their reactions. We have built an entire social rule around managing male desire instead of teaching men accountability for their thoughts and behaviour. That is not protection. That is outsourcing responsibility.

The cultural obsession with women’s nipples says far more about society than it does about women. It reveals how uncomfortable we still are with women existing as people rather than decorations. How quickly a body becomes a problem when it is not actively catering to someone else’s expectations.

I am tired of dressing defensively. Tired of scanning rooms and windows and reflections. Tired of layering clothing to prevent hypothetical offence. Tired of doing emotional labour for people who have never once considered whether their comfort comes at someone else’s expense.

I want a world where a woman without a bra is as unremarkable as a man without one. Where back pain is taken seriously. Where comfort is not treated as a moral failure. Where nipples are just nipples. Neutral. Boring. Unworthy of commentary.

Free the nipple is not about shock value. It is about freedom from pain, from surveillance, from the constant background noise of self monitoring. It is about trusting women to decide what they wear without assuming their choices exist for someone else’s consumption.

So yes. Free the nipple. Not because it is edgy. Not because it is rebellious. But because no one should be required to hurt their body to make other people feel normal. And because if the outline of a woman’s nipple through a t shirt is still a problem in 2026, that problem does not belong to women.