IFOP / Xlovecam survey on the habits of Europeans after the Covid crisis
Did the forms of "letting go" of clothing and body (e.g. no bra, no slip...) observed in France during the confinement(s) resist the return to a normal life? Do the hygienic practices of Europeans vary greatly according to their country, generation, gender or sexual activity?
Survey of 5000 people in the five largest European countries (Spain, Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom)
Younger French women stand out for their greater freedom from clothing norms through a much more pronounced rejection of bra wearing: 13% of young people under 25 do not wear a bra in France, compared to barely 3% in Spain, 2% in Italy and only 1% in the UK and Germany.
Boosted by the isolation imposed by the confinements, the practice of the no bra (absence of bra) has not been in France only a short-lived fashion...
The proportion of young French women under the age of 25 who never wear a bra stood at 13% this summer (June 2022), which is a significant decline from the first containment (20% in April 2020) but still a level three times higher than that measured before the health crisis broke out (4% in February 2020). Among French women as a whole, the absence of a bra remains a much less common daily practice (6% in June 2022) even if, here again, it has twice as many followers today as before the first containment (3% in February 2020).
François Kraus's point of view: Despite a return to more "normal" living conditions, the trend seems to be towards a certain anchoring of the practice of no bra among young people, no doubt because it is carried by two dynamics already present in lingerie before Covid: neo-feminism promoting the liberation of the female body and body positivism inciting a premium on comfort, both of which are very prevalent movements among these young generations.
This relative anchoring of the no bra among French women probably plays a large part in the fact that France is now the country where there are more women who do not wear a bra in the entire adult population (6% in France, against an average of 4%) but especially among young people under 25 years: 13% in France, against barely 3% in Spain, 2% in Italy and only 1% in the UK and Germany.
While they had been pioneers in the 20th century in the adoption of the bra - hailed then as a means of liberation from the corset -, French women would now seem to be the most willing to abandon what feminists of the 1960s had erected as a symbol of the oppression of women's clothing.
**In Simone de Beauvoir's country, it is difficult not to see in this taste for the no bra the effect of a more acute feminist conscience, the impact of media discourses on the subject and perhaps also the "fashion culture" of a country where the adoption of new trends is faster, especially when they are part of a logic of comfort. But we can also see the effect of a greater degree of secularization that would make French women less sensitive to puritanical pressures of a religious nature that opprobrize all forms of display of a female nipple.
TO QUOTE THIS STUDY, THE FOLLOWING WORDING SHOULD BE USED AT LEAST
"Ifop study for XloveCam conducted by online self-administered questionnaire from June 21 to 27, 2022 with a sample of 5,039 people representative of the population of Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom aged 18 years and over "
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