News from the Square

IF BREASTS COULD TALK: New Article and More Results from DRESSED TO KILL author Sydney Ross Singer and the Ongoing INTERNATIONAL BRA-FREE STUDY

Garden City Park, NY: In support of his continued research efforts alongside wife/fellow medical anthropologist Soma Grismaijer and breast health facilitator Ken L. Smith, bestselling author Sydney Ross Singer has just released a new article in both Academia.edu and the Hawaii Reporter.

The article is entitled “If Breasts Could Talk: Further Revealing Secrets of the International Bra-Free Study,” and it picks up from and amplifies the ongoing International Bra-Free Study that Singer and Grismaijer began in 2018 as a follow-up to their initial studies back in 1995 that proved a link between the wearing of tight bras and the occurrence of breast cancer.

The roots of these studies are firmly defined and presented for the general public in Singer and Grismaijer’s still-controversial book Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras (Square One, $16.95 USD / ISBN: 978-0-7570-0462-9). Now fully updated and revised by authors Singer and Grismaijer for their “Second Edition,” the book’s views regarding the fatal fashion at the heart of bra wearing has become far more fully accepted within the mainstream—particularly in the past few years of pandemic, as a great and growing surge of women opted to go “bra-less” amid the COVID-19 lockdown.

In addition to the inclusion of several positive testimonials from women participants in the study, Singer also reports in his new article the following key update:

“In the study, we ask participants to stop wearing bras, and we then follow their progress. We now have participants from Albania, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Curacao, England (UK), France, Germany (Deutschland), Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands (Holland), New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Scotland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan (ROC), and the US [United States].”

Following the pioneering lead of Singer and Grismaijer, along with a study published in 2002 by the International Journal of Biometeorology, there has also been over the past few years:

* A study based out of Spain in 2011 that found bras in general—underwire bras, in particular—were being increasingly linked to breast disease;

* A study based out of Nairobi in 2014 found a bra-cancer link in pre- and post-menopausal women;

* A major study, based out of Brazil and built directly upon the precepts of Singer and Grismaijer's important Bra and Breast Cancer Study conducted in the mid-’90s, was published in the May 2016 issue of Journal of Oncology Research and Treatment and, as described by Singer in his new article, was “the first epidemiological study to look at bra tightness and time worn, and found a significant bra-cancer link”; and

* An early 2018 article published in the Journal of Dermatological Science (“Lymph stasis promotes tumor growth”) was a testament to what many medical expertis across Europe and Asia said they had believed for more than a decade—the impairment of lymphatic flow throughout the female breast and elsewhere in the body caused by the wearing of bras was a key factor in subsequent diagnosis of cancer throughout much of the world.

More than signaling a change in current style or social perspective, the hope for Singer and Grismaijer is that their ongoing efforts may help to further legitimize bra-lessness as a culturally appropriate state of being—and that, as they write about in their book, could make all the difference in reducing the rate of breast cancer cases both here at home and throughout the world.

To learn more about what Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer have to say about bras and breast cancer, check out a copy of Dressed to Kill—Second Edition. (You can also check it out now in audio, narrated by Diane Neigebauer.) If you or someone you know is concerned about the possibility of breast cancer due to bras, consider becoming a participant in the International Bra-Free Study by visiting www.BraFreeStudy.org or receiving related information updates at https://brasandbreastcancer.org.