I hope you all are sitting down (it would be a bit strange if you weren’t) — American Eagle is selling padded bras to teenagers. I know. I don’t have a daughter myself, but I made sure to lock up a bunch of teenage girls I found milling about, lest they get ideas.
As ABC news explains:
American Eagle sells the Drew. It’s a push-up bra designed to boost more than just a young girl’s confidence – promising to add two cup sizes. American Eagle calls it the “Double Whoa” and it has some doing a double take because the bra is being marketed to girls as young as 15-years-old.
You see, the media has decided to act as though teenage girls haven’t been stuffing and padding their bras since the beginning of time, and that we ought to be concerned about Aerie’s “Drew” bra (named for the well-endowed Drew Barrymore, perhaps?) — following in the footsteps of Victoria Secret’s Miraculous bra, or La Senza’s double push-up, which promises to jump you up 2 full cup sizes — no toilet paper required. You know this already, of course, because Sarah Spangenberg already wrote up this story months ago, but this is a new controversy because from the ad, it’s clear they’re advertising to teenagers. Because of course they are. Because that’s who stuffs their bras.
17 Magazine’s Editor in Chief made this confusing statement:
“Girls want to look pretty, but they do not want that icky sexual attention. They just want to feel good in their clothes, they just want to feel pretty, and that’s what these bras are about.”
So… they do or don’t want the bra?
Because I can tell you, I have purchased a double push-up bra, and frankly — no offence to any well-endowed women — I hate the attention, even at 23. I’ve always wanted bigger breasts, but it’s disgusting how a bigger bustline somehow entitles men to make comments or behave in a way that they didn’t or wouldn’t to my usual C-cup self. But there’s another point — what about young women who are naturally large-chested? Aren’t we sending a message to those girls that they ought to be embarrassed about the size of their breasts and that their larger bust lines are over-sexualized naturally?
Controversy aside, it would be nice if, instead of offering to take women from a C to a Double-D, that they started offering bras for actual teenagers suffering with the pain of trying to find cute bras for real Double-D breasts, but that’s an issue for another time.
What’s your take? Is there anything shocking about this ad, or are they just appealing to the demographic most likely to buy this bra?
