Let me preface this by saying I am a man, and smoked a little too much, so I’m sitting here thinking… what is or was the original purpose of a bra? Weight support? Vanity? Covering the nips so people’s eyes met your eyes and you can have a normal conversation? Like what’s it all about?
I mean no offense, but after all of the work women have done to get the rights and regards that they have today (don’t misunderstand me, there’s still work that can be done), and excuse my assumption, but it would be more or less the woman’s control of whether they would/should wear a bra, so the argument (I’m going to summarize to list to a single word. I mean no offense, but it’s my perception. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) of whether you should or shouldn’t is a feminist argument that feminist are the ones that argue about the most. However, I still believe “your body your right”. Do what you want.
However I had 2 ulterior motives for asking: 1) to actually know where and why bras were first used 2) the vast majority of people (cis, trans, straight, gay, men, and women) enjoy boobs. There are people on the planet that sexualize boobs, but boobs are a hot topic. People enjoy talking about boobs, and to me it’s a weird phenomenon. About the only exception I think to that rule would be gay men, but they can probably still appreciate a good pair of pups.
Again, I mean no offense. I just believe that some conversations about boobs are neither alienating or innapropriate. I hope I explained this in a way that isn’t creepy. If it does seem creep, please let me know and I’ll try to reword it
I’ll be honest, if you don’t have an understanding of how deeply these (along with white supremacy, cis heteronormativity, ablesim, classism) impact not only society at large, but our individual choices (or lack thereof), and it sounds like you don’t (E: among other reasons - the existence of feminism doesn’t negate the impacts of the aforementioned systems, if anything, it exists because those systems are still completely pervasive and need fighting against), I can’t really help at this point, there’s just too much to unpack and it’s not work I’m interested in doing for you.
As for your ulterior motives - the first is easy to resolve by opening a search engine and looking it up, the second absolutely makes you sound like a creep, and also provides a perfect demonstration of the kind of external pressure we face that more often than not compels us to cover up - we feel you “appreciating” our “pups” (aka your “male gaze” or simply you objectifying us. And no, trying to pull an “all genders sexualise” doesn’t change the fact that cis men are who predominantly harm women and others afab). And it’s fucking gross.
Maybe you should read my first reply again, this time try and actually listen to the experience of a person explaining to you the pressures they and others like them face from society that you never have, instead of dismissing it because it makes you uncomfortable to confront, and then invest some of your own time actually researching the topic, not of why people wear bras, but of how fundamentally social constructs impact society and all the individuals in it, and maybe you’ll start to get an idea of what the actual answer to your question is.
But I have a feeling you’re not interested in doing any of that, so I’ll just leave you with this - boobs don’t exist for you.