Earlier this year, teachers at Gilgandra high school, five hours drive north-west of Sydney, noticed a drop in the number of girls participating in sports.
“We were brainstorming what the reason was that they were not participating, who the students were, and which activities they were not wanting to participate in,” says the school’s relieving deputy principal, Ilana Austen.
They soon realised the problem: sports bras.
“The students who are at the end of year 7 and are going into year 8 and 9, that’s when they’re going through lots of growth and development and that’s when we identified a real need,” Austen says.
“Where we are, access to resources is quite difficult and there are no shops in town really that sell bras or underwear but we wanted to provide resources for all the students. The question was, were we able to provide appropriate sporting material for females as they were developing?”
Austen had previously visited professional bra fitter Philippa Mitchell from The Fitting Studio. Based in Orange, 200km away, Mitchell travels to rural and regional towns fitting women of all shapes and sizes, from size 8 to 30 and AA to K cups, including women who have had cancer and need mastectomy bras and prosthetics.
But fitting a school group was a new project.
“[Austen] asked if they could buy 120 bras. So, we set it all up and fitted all the girls, ordered the right bras, boxed them up and all the girls got the same bra in the same colour on the same day,” Mitchell says. “The girls were very excited.”
Mitchell worked one-on-one with each of the teenagers.
“If they were nervous or anxious I would say to them that I’m there to respect and support them,” she says. “For that five minutes, it’s me and them and it’s all very discreet and private.”
Each girl received their bra before the school’s athletics carnival. Austen says it resulted in a 70% increase in female students participating on the day.
The school’s equity funding paid for the initiative, and she hopes it can continue.
“We know our kids, we know our community and are very in touch with the increased cost of living.”
Mitchell has since received requests from schools in Dubbo, Binnaway, Singleton, Barham and Maitland.
Binnaway central school principal, Lisa Wright, says it was difficult for her students to get professionally fitted for bras.
“[We’re] fairly remote. The nearest place would be Dubbo, and we’re a low socioeconomic [region] so most of the community would not have access to get to Dubbo,” she says.
“[Mitchell’s help] means our young ladies had the opportunity to be professionally fitted, which they may otherwise not have got, and it has increased their confidence. It’s a great initiative.”
Mitchell says she only travels to places that don’t have a lingerie shop, and where the women are two or more hours from a major centre. She sets up at a shop in town, offers virtual fittings, and also owns a vintage retrofitted caravan that she takes to markets and expos, travelling as far afield as Millthorpe, near Orange, to Nyngan, 300km north-west.
“There are many shops in metropolitan areas that offer this service, but in rural and regional areas the service is very limited,” she says.
Self-worth, dignity and a well-fitting bra
Charity organisation Support the Girls is also striving to provide professionally fitted bras and other essential products to disadvantaged and isolated women and girls, and using those services to drive participation in health checks like mammograms.
Operating in Queensland and NSW, the organisation reaches more than 2,000 women every year. Founder Jane Holmes says the charity uses its gifting events to bring women together in a safe space, professionally fitting them “so they’re actually walking out the door with the correct product”.
“All of the service that we do is complimentary,” she says. “It has a huge impact on their self-worth, their self-esteem and their dignity, which is really important.”
The charity also holds breast screen events, which Holmes says have encouraged Indigenous women to participate in the free health checks. “Until now, the participation rate in mammograms has been drastically lower within our rural communities for Indigenous women. So it’s about closing the gap, but also about changing lives,” she says.
Helen Byrne is another professional bra fitter based in Axedale, 22km east of Bendigo in central Victoria.
“I’m all about building relationships with my clients,” she says. “I’ll re-service an area every 12 months because women change in bra size on average six times in their lives – there’s weight loss, having babies, weight gain.”
“Last week, I went to visit three generations and they said they could never have got that service anywhere else.”
One of her clients, Kate Edwards, who lives in Hilldene, 90km south-east of Bendigo, had her bra professionally fitted by Byrne for the first time this month, in the Victorian town of Seymour.
“She is easy to deal with, full of knowledge about the best fit, and it’s so convenient,” Edwards says. “We have to travel at least an hour to buy a quality bra and it always gets pushed to the back of your list.”
Byrne says she’s been asked many times to go to the city, but she wants to focus on serving country women.
“I’ve lived most of my life in the country,” she says. “I know what a country woman does every day and I know my own personal challenges; working my business, to working the horses, to working on the property. That’s my passion.”
