french-braless.JPG

French women toss aside their bras. (This is actually a breast cancer awareness event, not a response to the study.)

(THOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images))

Women don’t need to wear bras.

That’s according to the French, so it must be true.

A French professor made an international splash recently when he announced that 15 years of research proved bras actually make breasts saggier.

He reached this conclusion after painstakingly measuring his study subjects’ breasts with calipers and a slide rule.

Right now, every woman reading this is no doubt asking, "Professor of what?," her eyes narrowed with skepticism

(The university professor was described as a "sports science expert.")

(The English translation of that phrase would be, "sexual harassment defendant in training.")

And we're equally certain every gentlemen is asking, "How can I get that job?"

No easy answer there, guys, because the pool of women who like their chests — or really any body part, come to think of it — subjected to calipers is extremely small.

Our professor measured the breasts of 330 women at a local hospital. What he found is that bra-less women developed firmer breasts and saw their stretch marks fade.

His theory is that the breast’s supporting muscles grow stronger when they have to fight gravity. In other words, those muscles get kind of lazy if the bra does all the heavy lifting. So to speak.

His study participants saw their breasts lift by an average of 7 millimeters for every year they went braless. (That’s the equivalent of a bit more than a quarter-inch.)

To refute that finding, we offer two words:

National.

Geographic.

Yes, the magazines you pawed through as a child showed a braless demographic that did most assuredly not display any yearly lift of 7 millimeters.

If anything, it called into question concern about going too long without a bra, as well as the very wisdom of pawing through National Geographics.

The other problem with

le professeur's

conclusion is the simple math. (And physics, for that matter.)

He would seem to believe that if a woman went braless for a full decade, her breasts would elevate to the tune of 70 millimeters, or roughly 2¾ inches.

And we all know that isn’t happening. Do the math for 20 years, and you’ve got a French woman whose breasts are levitating out of her beautiful Parisienne frock. Haute couture, indeed.

We suspect that with publication of his data, the professor’s study is over — mostly because the hospital whose patients he measured now realizes what was really going on.

He’ll have to find another underwear-and-gravity topic to tackle, slide rule and calipers at the ready.

May we suggest boxers or briefs?