{"id":13171,"date":"2017-09-29T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/09\/29\/40-years-of-athletic-support-happy-anniversary-to-the-sports-bra\/"},"modified":"2017-09-29T19:41:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T19:41:00","slug":"40-years-of-athletic-support-happy-anniversary-to-the-sports-bra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/40-years-of-athletic-support-happy-anniversary-to-the-sports-bra\/","title":{"rendered":"40 Years Of Athletic Support: Happy Anniversary To The Sports Bra"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jane Lindholm<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Brandi Chastain celebrates after scoring the winning goal of the 1999 World Cup.<\/p>\n

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Hector Mata\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Hector Mata\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Title IX is often credited with getting more girls involved in sports, but there’s another, more intimate milestone in the women-in-sports story that deserves some recognition: This year, the Jogbra turns 40.<\/p>\n

In 1977, Hinda Miller<\/a> had just started working at the University of Vermont and had taken up jogging. But she found she had a problem: What to do with her breasts? “I used two bras,” she says. “You know, everyone has their stories of what they did.”<\/p>\n

Across campus, Lisa Lindahl<\/a> was in the same predicament. She reached out to a friend \u2014 Polly Smith<\/a>, who made costumes for the university’s theater department, where Miller also worked \u2014 and the three of them got together to build a better bra.<\/p>\n

“We bought some bras, tore them apart,” Miller remembers. “I was taking notes; Lisa was running. ‘Does that feel good? Does that feel good?’ “<\/p>\n

None of it felt good. See, breasts move \u2014 a lot. Up and down, side to side, even back to front. And they can be really heavy. Try as they might, the women couldn’t figure out how to make a bra that could stop the painful bounce. At one point, Lindahl’s then-husband came downstairs with two jockstraps slung over his chest. He was teasing them, but it led to an idea. Miller remembers thinking, “That’s what we want to do \u2014 we want to pull everything close to the body.”<\/p>\n

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\n Hinda Miller stands by a bronze plaque at the University of Vermont that commemorates the Jogbra.<\/p>\n

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Jane Lindholm\/VPR<\/p>\n

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She ran to the store, bought two jockstraps and brought them back to the costume shop. “The waist band became our rib band,” Miller says. “We crossed the straps in the back because we didn’t want them to fall, and it went over our head. And that was it.”<\/p>\n