The meaning of bra in the everyday lives of women. yi-hui , J. In Kim, S. D., Shin, H. J., Yoon, T., Kim, Y. R., & Hong, J., editors, volume 2, pages 157--171, Gwangju, Korea, October, 2006. The Executive Agency for Culture Cities, The Ministry of Culture & Tourism.
abstract   bibtex   
To maintain the professional status in consumers’ mind, the modern bra industry constructs a set of knowledge about the use of bra. However, the everyday lives of women are the processes of becoming social realities, not the established reality itself. Therefore women who wear bra always develop their own particular knowledge about what to do with bra, and not totally obey what the modern bra industry expects them to do. By interviewing Taiwanese women of diverse body types, ages, and consuming experiences, I attempt to draw out the diverse meanings of modern bra to women in Taiwan. What the bra stands for is that it breaks the distinction between daily commodity and quality good, between the expendables and collection, between clothes and underwear, between object and flesh, and between public and private sphere. To different women the ways of using bra are diverse, so bra has multiple meanings to them. That means modern bra industry can’t control the meaning and relationship of bra to each woman, and provides the possibilities to subvert, reconstruct, and diversify the singular knowledge about bra which constructed by modern bra industry. The professional knowledge that I has pointed out includes how to put on bra, how to wash bra, how to choose bra fitting the buyers, and so on. First, some women regard bra just as the common daily commodity, and they unwilling pay expensive cost for it; however, others regard bra as quality goods made form high-tech process, particularly because the quality of bra affects the body shapes of women. Second, most women can agree that bra is expendable; however, a collector of bra regards each set of her underwear as exclusive and precious collection. Finally, in order to integrate into the prevalence fashion industry, modern bra industry recreated underwear as outerwear. That also breaks the line between public and private sphere, since woman’s private underwear is allowed to be seen in public as a certain fashion statement.
@inproceedings{kim_meaning_2006,
	address = {Gwangju, Korea},
	title = {The meaning of bra in the everyday lives of women},
	volume = {2},
	abstract = {To maintain the professional status in consumers’ mind, the modern bra industry constructs a set of knowledge about the use of bra. However, the everyday lives of women are the processes of becoming social realities, not the established reality itself. Therefore women who wear bra always develop their own particular knowledge about what to do with bra, and not totally obey what the modern bra industry expects them to do. By interviewing Taiwanese women of diverse body types, ages, and consuming experiences, I attempt to draw out the diverse meanings of modern bra to women in Taiwan. What the bra stands for is that it breaks the distinction between daily commodity and quality good, between the expendables and collection, between clothes and underwear, between object and flesh, and between public and private sphere. To different women the ways of using bra are diverse, so bra has multiple meanings to them. That means modern bra industry can’t control the meaning and relationship of bra to each woman, and provides the possibilities to subvert, reconstruct, and diversify the singular knowledge about bra which constructed by modern bra industry. The professional knowledge that I has pointed out includes how to put on bra, how to wash bra, how to choose bra fitting the buyers, and so on. First, some women regard bra just as the common daily commodity, and they unwilling pay expensive cost for it; however, others regard bra as quality goods made form high-tech process, particularly because the quality of bra affects the body shapes of women. Second, most women can agree that bra is expendable; however, a collector of bra regards each set of her underwear as exclusive and precious collection. Finally, in order to integrate into the prevalence fashion industry, modern bra industry recreated underwear as outerwear. That also breaks the line between public and private sphere, since woman’s private underwear is allowed to be seen in public as a certain fashion statement.},
	language = {Chinese},
	publisher = {The Executive Agency for Culture Cities, The Ministry of Culture \& Tourism},
	author = {yi-hui, Jiang},
	editor = {Kim, Shin Dong and Shin, Hyun Joon and Yoon, Tae-Jin and Kim, Ye Ran and Hong, Jung-eun},
	month = oct,
	year = {2006},
	pages = {157--171}
}

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