Ladies, Apparently You Need A Bra That Tells You You’re Overeating

smart bra tells women they're overeatingHey! Have you heard about that new “smart bra” that Microsoft is developing?

The bra contains removable sensors that measure heart and skin activity and can let you know when your stress levels are increasing.

Okay. I’m game. I guess that could be helpful in some situations. Maybe it could help you note how stressed you are overall, or help you notice what seems to trigger a stress response. Is that, perhaps, why this bra is being developed?

Uh, well, no. According to their research paper, the bra is being developed as a “just-in-time intervention to support behavioral modification in emotional eating.” According to the study, emotional eaters need help because of “the combination of lifestyle, hedonic, emotional, or habitual over-eating that leads to obesity.”

Now I get it. I need sensors in my bra BECAUSE OBESITY. (Even though the reality is that “obese” people eat no more than thinner people, but why let reality get in the way of fixating on fauxbesity?)

Does This Bra Make My Boobs Look Sexist?

I honestly think this is could be a great piece of technology. But, since it’s designed to help women monitor their stress levels, OF COURSE, the focus has to be on food and weight.

Just the idea that women need a bra like this fosters the typical, diet-industry view of women. We all know the typical diet-industry female archetype who is desperate to lose weight, desperate to control her eating, unaware of her own needs and emotions, fearful that she has no willpower, and, somehow, always close enough to a refrigerator that may tempt her to fall into a bingey abyss.

So, of course, she needs sensors in her bra to let her know when she’s stressed and remind her not to go to the fridge. Because women are just mindless grazers who need to have their emotions “brasplained” to them? Or because shame works so well? Or because telling someone not to do something all day long makes them want to do it . . . less? None of this makes sense to me.

(Also, just as a sidenote, I think most women would take off their bra if they wanted to comfortably binge at home. But hey, they can’t think of everything.)

Reinforcing The Disconnect

I acknowledge that women often feel disconnected from their bodies. In many ways, the weight-loss industry creates and reinforces this disconnect by telling women to actively ignore their bodies’ signals (e.g. hunger cues and responses to exercise) and focus on weight loss goals that have nothing to do with the reality of their actual bodies.

In my coaching practice, I help women pay attention to their bodies again. And it’s often much easier for them than they expect. It just takes a little time, and practice, and a willingness to trust their bodies.

Do we really need our bras to tell us when we’re stressed out? And furthermore, is the answer always not to eat?

Stick a fork in my electronics-laden bra. I’m done.

What do you think of this bra? Let me know in the comments section below!

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Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. To learn more about Golda and her work, click here.

13 thoughts on “Ladies, Apparently You Need A Bra That Tells You You’re Overeating

  1. I’m pro-personal data collection (as in me, collecting data on myself, because I am a nerd and I like graphing things.) and this isn’t a terrible idea. But, I’m also an academic and the logical leaps needed to get from “cool data collections system helps people track stress” to “support (hahaha! get it? support! bra!) system helps fight obesity” is completely distressing to me. I just downloaded the paper to read it. But, that will probably just make me angrier.

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