Home Care Nurse Reveals Why Women Over 70 Quietly Stop Wearing Bras (Hint: Every Bra Is Made to Fit a 25-Year-Old), and What They Wear Instead

IT STARTED WITH SUSIE’S MOTHER

I took care of Susie’s mother for the last three years of her life. Every morning started the same way. Her fingers were stiff and her shoulders didn’t go back anymore, so I did her hooks. By lunch the band had climbed up her back and a strap had slid off her shoulder, and she’d sit there pulling at it.

Susie is 67. Before she started Susie’s, she spent years at one of the biggest makers of women’s underwear and bras.

One morning she stood in her mother’s bedroom doorway and watched me fight those hooks. Then she said something I’ve never forgotten.

“That bra was never made for her, Peggy. Every bra in the store was made to fit a 25-year-old.”

I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.

WHO YOUR BRA WAS REALLY MADE FOR

Susie explained it to me over coffee that same day. She can’t name the company she worked for. She signed papers when she left, and they’d sue her if she did. But she told me how it works.

Every bra pattern starts on one body. Bra makers call her the fit model. They pin the cups on her and change them until they look right on her. Then they make thousands, in every size, all shaped like her.

She is almost always young, often in her twenties. Her chest is firm, sits high and is round. “In all my years there, I never saw a fit model over 30,” Susie told me.

At 75, that’s not your chest anymore, and nothing is wrong with you. It just got softer, it sits lower, and it spreads out to the sides. I see it on my ladies every day.

But the bra is still shaped for her. So the cup gapes at the top. The wire sits on you instead of under you. And the band climbs up your back all day, trying to hold up a shape that isn’t there.

That’s why the bigger size never fixed it. That’s why the “comfort” bra never fixed it either. They were all cut from the same young girl.

“It’s a fine bra for somebody else,” Susie said. “I want to make one for women like us.”

RUTH’S FIRST TRY

Susie made a tank top with a bra built right in, at her own kitchen table. On her, it fit fine. Then she asked me for a real test, on a woman whose bra gave her real trouble every day.

So I brought Ruth. She’s been my patient for six years. She’s 89, and her left shoulder won’t go up past her ear. Every Tuesday for six years, I’d been the one hooking her bra.

Ruth pulled the tank on, and it stood away from both her sides like an open envelope.

Susie stood there with a pin in her mouth and didn’t say a word for a long time. Then she saw why. She’d cut that first tank from a store pattern, and the store pattern was made on a young body, same as every bra in the store.

So she threw that pattern in the trash and started over, on Ruth.

After that, it was Tuesdays. I drove Ruth over, and Susie’s kitchen turned into a fitting room. June, a friend from church who wears a 42DDD. Darlene, Gail, Marion, Norma and Alma. Dottie, another one of my patients. The youngest was 70. The oldest was Ruth.

Susie had one rule. Nobody at that table was under 70. If it didn’t fit them, it didn’t get made.

I stood in the doorway with my coffee most of those Tuesdays. Here’s what I saw.

MARION DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS HER

Marion is 77. On the third Tuesday she walked down Susie’s hall in a sample and stopped at the mirror. “Who’s that?” she said. Then she laughed, because it was her. I’d walked right past her myself.

Here’s why. A bra squeezes you with a tight band and hangs you from two thin straps. You get a shelf where the band sits and a bulge right under it. Your blouse hangs off you like a sack.

Susie’s tank had no band. The molded cups shaped Marion in front, and the long, snug body ran smooth from under her arms to past her waist. It didn’t hoist her up like a push-up bra. It held her where she belonged.

Marion has a drawer of shapewear that squeezes like a tube of toothpaste. She hasn’t opened it since.

THE ROLL ON DARLENE’S BACK WAS NEVER HER WEIGHT

So many of my ladies hate that bulge across the upper back. It’s in every wedding picture, and they blame their weight. Darlene did too.

Darlene is 72. One Tuesday she put a fitted blouse on over the sample, then drove to a store and turned around in the three-way mirror.

“Same me,” she told Susie. “The roll just wasn’t there anymore.”

That roll comes from the band. A strip of tight elastic presses into soft skin and pushes it up and over itself. On a firm young back, a band sits flat. On an older back, it digs in. Take the band away and the roll goes with it, on the same body at the same weight.

That was the day Susie said there would never be a band in this tank, not even a soft one. There never has been.

JUNE SWORE NOTHING WITHOUT A WIRE WOULD HOLD HER

June is 71 and wears a 42DDD. She stood in Susie’s kitchen with her arms crossed and said nothing without a wire would ever hold her. She was the hardest test at that table.

But a wire is shaped for a chest that sits high and round. On a softer, fuller chest it doesn’t sit under you. It sits right on you, and you feel it by lunch.

Susie put the rest of it this way: “Every bra I ever owned hung the whole weight from the same three spots. Two thin straps and one band.” The heavier you are up top, the deeper those three spots dig.

So Susie spread the weight out. The molded cups, the wide flat straps and the long, snug body each carry a piece, so no one spot takes it all.

That Sunday, June served a whole church supper in it, three hours on her feet. She called me that night. “Peggy, I never hiked a strap once.”

NOBODY AT THE TABLE KNEW HER BRA SIZE

The first Tuesday, Susie asked everyone her bra size. She got a different answer from every woman, and a few shrugs. Ruth said 36C. I’ve been dressing Ruth for six years, and she hasn’t been a 36C since the Johnson administration.

It isn’t just Ruth. Fitting surveys keep finding that about 8 in 10 women wear the wrong bra size. How could you get it right, when the sizes were made for somebody else?

So Susie threw out the bra math too. You start with your shirt size, then check the chart. There’s no band number and no cup letter. It runs from S to 6XL, and Susie wears an XL herself.

Gail is 70 and was between two sizes. The bigger one felt roomy, so Susie put her in the smaller one, and that was that.

“Nobody measured me,” Gail said. “It just fit.”

DOTTIE’S 3 O’CLOCK TRIP TO THE BATHROOM

Dottie is 84, and she’s one of my patients too. For years, every afternoon around 3, she slipped off to the bathroom wherever she was. At church, at her daughter’s, at the beauty shop. She was unhooking her bra.

A bra band feels tighter every hour you sit. Two thin straps and one band hold the whole load, hour after hour. By afternoon you’re counting down to taking it off.

Susie’s tank has no band and no wire, and the straps are wide and flat. The whole tank does the holding, a little bit everywhere, so nothing gets tighter as the day goes on.

The first day Dottie wore hers, she went all afternoon and never slipped off once. When I came by that evening she said, “Peggy, I forgot I had it on.”

NORMA STOPPED DREADING JULY

Norma’s church basement has one box fan in July, and it points at Norma.

Norma is 76. A band holds tight elastic around your ribs for 12 hours. On a hot afternoon it’s a damp line you peel off your skin, and it’s still red at bedtime. That was Norma every July.

Some of my ladies just quit wearing a bra in summer. Then they wear a cardigan all through July, just in case somebody comes to the door. I see that sweater hanging by the door in half the homes I visit.

Susie’s tank has no band at all. Nothing wraps around your ribs, and it still holds you.

“I won’t say it’s like wearing nothing in July,” Norma told me. “But that wet line under my chest is gone, and so is my cardigan.”

RUTH GOT IT ON IN ONE TRY AT 89

Ruth getting it on by herself was the last thing Susie needed. Ruth was why I was in that kitchen in the first place.

A bra hooks in the middle of your back, where you can’t see. That’s easy at 30. It’s hard with stiff fingers or a shoulder that won’t bend back. The CDC says nearly half of Americans 65 and older have arthritis. Ruth has it in both hands, plus that left shoulder. That’s why I’d been doing her hooks for six years.

So nothing goes behind your back. No hooks, no clasp, no wire. It goes over your head, then one arm, then the other. Tug it down over your hips and tuck it in.

The day the last sample was done, Ruth sat on the edge of her bed with it, and I stood back with my hands in my pockets. Over her head, good arm, bad arm, tug, tuck. One try.

She held up one finger at me and grinned. That’s the day Susie said the tank was done.

THE TANK THAT CAME OFF SUSIE’S KITCHEN TABLE

Think about everything those women were fighting: the shelf in the mirror, the roll on the back, the wire you feel by lunch, the size nobody knew, the 3 o’clock trip to the bathroom, the wet line in July and the hooks behind you.

Every one of them came from a bra made for a 25-year-old and worn on a body that’s 70, 80 or 89.

Going without fixes the hooks, but then nothing holds you. Those women needed nothing to fasten and something that holds the body they have now, both at once.

That’s what came off Susie’s kitchen table. It’s called the Susie’s Built-in Bra Comfort Tank.

It has no band, no wire, no hooks and no clasp. The molded cups are built right in. The straps are wide and flat. The long, snug body does the holding, from under your arms to past your waist. You pull it on over your head and tuck it in. It comes in S to 6XL.

Every version was tried on women 70 to 89 before Susie sold a single one. Susie’s says more than 50,000 women have ordered it since.

WHAT WOMEN WHO WEAR IT TELL ME

Those Tuesdays were only the start. Since then I’ve told a lot of my ladies about it, and I’ve heard from plenty of women who wear it.

Patricia R. put it this way: “Look at the lift. No wire doing that, just the tank. I look ten years younger from the side and nothing digs in.”

Here are a few more in their own words. You’ll see Linda and Susan again on Susie’s page, with their before and after pictures.

🏡 You Don’t Know Her Yet

WHO YOU’RE BUYING FROM

If I were you, I’d want to know who’s on the other end of this before I ordered anything from the internet. My ladies ask me that all the time.

So here’s who Susie is. She’s 67. Before Susie’s, she spent years inside one of the biggest bra and underwear makers there is. She can’t say which one. She saw how bras get made, and she knew they weren’t made for women like her mother or Ruth. So she made the first tank in her own kitchen. Susie’s is one woman who got fed up, plus a table of friends who were fed up too.

Every tank was tried on real women over 70 before she sold a single one. I was there for most of it. Nobody in that kitchen is 25.

Every order comes with a 90-Day Guarantee.

WHAT THEY KEEP IN THEIR DRAWERS

Once the last sample was done, every woman Susie fitted ordered three. One to wear, one in the wash and one saved for Sunday. June took one in each color so she could match her church clothes.

Susie keeps the same three in her own drawer. She told me some nights she forgets to take hers off and sleeps in it.

Right now Susie’s is running their Fall Sale. It’s Buy 2, Get 1 Free, so the third one costs you nothing. If you want five, it’s Buy 3, Get 2 Free. Shipping is free in the US, and you can mix the colors any way you like.

I don’t know how long they’ll keep that going, and the popular sizes go first. If your size is in stock today, that’s when I’d get it.

On their page it’s called the Comfort Shaper Tank. Don’t let the word “shaper” put you off. It isn’t tight like a girdle, and it’s the same tank Ruth and June tried on in Susie’s kitchen.

⚠️ Copycats Even Took Susie’s Photos

WHY YOU WON’T FIND IT ON AMAZON

I need to warn you about something that already happened to some women I know.

Susie’s is only sold on susies.co. It isn’t on Amazon or Walmart, and it isn’t in stores.

Copycat sites have copied the look, and some even took Susie’s own photos. What shows up in the mail is a thin shelf cami with two loose pads. Not one of the women Susie fitted would have worn it.

Alma is 81 and lives across the street from Ruth. Last spring her sister ordered a look-alike online instead of asking Alma where hers came from. The pads slid sideways after one wash.

So get it from susies.co. That’s the only place the Fall Sale and the 90-Day Guarantee apply.

THE QUESTIONS WOMEN ASK ME FIRST

Whenever I tell a woman about it, she asks me the same few things. Here are my answers.

“Is Susie a real person?”

Yes. I’ve had coffee in her kitchen more times than I can count. She’s 67, she wears an XL, and the tank started in her kitchen. Her friends still try on every new color before anyone else gets it.

“I already stopped wearing a bra. Why would I go back?”

You wouldn’t be going back. There are no hooks or band, and nothing to reach behind you for. It’s a tank top you pull on over your head. You get held again without the part that made you quit.

“What size do I get?”

Start with your shirt size, then check the chart. There’s no band number and no cup letter. It comes in S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL and 6XL, in 8 colors. The size chart is right above the sizes on Susie’s page. Susie wears an XL herself.

“Will it hold me if I’m big up top?”

June wears a 42DDD and she was the hardest test. It won’t push you up like an underwire, but it holds you where you belong, with no wire and nothing digging in.

“Can I put it on with a bad shoulder or stiff hands?”

Yes. Ruth gets hers on by herself. Sit on the edge of the bed, put it over your head first, then your good arm, then the other one. There is nothing to fasten.

“Will it ride up?”

Not if you tuck it in. It’s cut long so it tucks into your slacks and stays down. Untucked, it can creep up when you bend over.

“How do I wash it?”

Wash it on gentle, in cold water. Lay it flat to dry, or tumble dry on low. The cups are built in, so you just wash it as is.

THE WAY I SEE IT NOW

You can close this page and keep going the way you are. Tomorrow you put on a bra that was made for a 25-year-old. The wire sits on you, the band climbs your back, and you count the hours until you can take it off. Or you leave it in the drawer and keep a sweater by the door.

I’ve watched my ladies live that way for years. So did every woman at Susie’s table.

Or you can do what Ruth, June, Darlene, Gail, Marion, Dottie and Norma did. Pull it on over your head, tuck it in and go about your day.

Nobody ever made a bra for the body these women have now. So Susie made one in her own kitchen, on women 70 to 89, and most Tuesdays I was standing in the doorway.

Peggy

P.S.

Ruth wears hers every Tuesday when I come by. The other week she told Susie, “You should’ve started with me in the first place.” Susie laughed and said she’s right. I haven’t done Ruth’s hooks since.

P.P.S. Start with your shirt size, not a cup size. It runs from S to 6XL.

Fall Sale: Buy 2, Get 1 Free. Free US shipping. 90-Day Guarantee.