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Working Out in a Strapless Push-Up Bra: Insane?

Photo: Roshan Perera / Splash News

Following a People magazine report that, during spin class, Amanda Bynes “stopped to take her T-shirt off, revealing only a tiny, black, strapless push-up bra — not a sports bra,” the Cut broke into debate. Is exercising in a strapless push-up bra a sign of insanity? Let us discuss the latest dilemma of Bynes. (Pictured above in a different bra.)

Maureen: I have to disagree with your Bynes post, Char. Wearing a strapless push up bra to the gym is INSANE.
Charlotte: 
I agree that it’s weird, but I’ve totally done it when I’ve forgotten a sports bra.
Maureen: 
STRAPLESS, though? Even strippers don’t do strapless when in motion.
Charlotte:
Well, technically not strapless. Just normal underwire. But I feel like wearing a strapless push-up bra is favorable to going braless entirely, which would be her other option. That loosey-goosey feeling can be really unnerving in public places.
Maureen: I don’t know. Bralessness has a certain hippie logic, at least, though it does prevent shirt-removal.

Kat: Wait. I have something important to say. 
Kat: On Saturday I sent out my laundry before going on a run, and had zero sports bras left.
Kat: So I wore a normal underwire bra, with this really useless American Apparel bandeau bra over it, and a third, cupless, bikini-style bra over that. And it worked GREAT.
Maureen: Triple-bagged boobs! In The Truth About Diamonds: A Novel, the Paris Hilton character wears padded strappy bras over padded strapless bras to enhance her cleavage. Not that I’m admitting to reading that book. In one sitting. Or to using this technique for special occasions.
Kat: This was the opposite of enhancing. (Not that I couldn’t use it.) Also hard to get out of. But it did create all these little pockets to stash my keys and Gatorade money in.
Maureen: Maybe the real issue is that I’m too breast-deficient to comprehend a strapless bra staying up, ever, much less during strenuous activity.
Charlotte: Same — and I rarely wear real bras as a result. (Prefer the cotton tank under-layer, if you must know.)
Charlotte: But if she was in a spin class, she wasn’t really bouncing around. It was more about just having something “there.”
Kat: Especially if she has good spin form.

Maureen: I am now looking at pictures of Bynes’s boobs.
Charlotte: Yeah, we might need to go to the books on this one. Exactly how necessary was the “support”?
Maureen: Maxim suggests they are not, to quote the newly pregnant Shakira, “small and humble.” But not too jiggly, either.

Photo: Splash News/ Maxim

Maureen: Then again, the breast activity occurring in this Herve Leger getup suggests a cup that occasionally runneth over.

Photo: Frank Trapper

Charlotte: That’s why I love that photo of Bynes with the bra story. She looks SO MUCH LIKE LILO. And some wild boobs on the loose will only compound the likeness. At first I was like, Oh, how embarrassing, the photo agency confused them.

Photo: JLM / Splash News/www.splashnews.com

Kat: Physically, yeah, but behaviorally wasn’t Amanda’s spin-class bra episode much more (speaking of Paris) Bimbo-Summit-Era Britney?
Maureen: Good point. Physics may be distracting us from greater issues of psyche.
Kat: Anyway, I’m so excited for Amanda to move to NYC.
Kat: And for the inevitable day when she runs into LiLo.
Kat: Weaves will get tangled.

Working Out in a Strapless Push-Up Bra: Insane?