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ASK Vanessa
A reader wonders when it’s OK to abandon the undergarment.
![Are There Any Rules About Going Braless? (1) Are There Any Rules About Going Braless? (1)](https://i0.wp.com/static01.nyt.com/images/2023/08/25/fashion/25ASKVANESSA/25ASKVANESSA-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
I find bras totally uncomfortable, hot and itchy, for both work and leisure. But looking around, I seem to be in the minority. What are the rules for going braless? Is it OK to show my nips, or is it rude? — Eddye, Madison, Wis.
You are not the only one having an anti-bra moment. When many dressing mores went out the window during the pandemic lockdowns, the no-bra movement, which has resurfaced regularly since the 1960s, once again began picking up steam (led, in part, by Florence Pugh, above).
Still, when it comes to the question of “to bra or not to bra,” especially as we return to offices and summer draws to a close, there are really three kinds of issues: the literal one, the physical one and the sociocultural one.
First things first: There are literally no rules, which is to say laws, that govern women’s underwear. Instead, laws focus on body parts, and what can be shown and not shown. Indiana, for example, prohibits public indecency and then defines it partly as “the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple.”
However, a number of states, including New York, Utah and Oklahoma, and many more cities (including Madison) allow women to go topless in public. Which also means braless.
This gets a little more complicated when it comes to workplace dress codes, according to Susan Scafidi, the founder of the Fashion Law Institute. New York City was, she said, the first jurisdiction to insist on “full gender neutrality,” meaning an employer can “require an individual identifying as female to wear a bra or hide her nipples, but only if the same rule applies to a male employee.”
It is possible to imagine “S.N.L.” having a field day with that. But the current situation is better than it was back in 2010, when the investment bank UBS issued a 44-page dress code, which, among other things, dictated that its female employees wear flesh-toned lingerie.
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