Kim Kardashian’s ‘power nipple’ bra is the stuff of women’s nightmares

If Kim Kardashian gets her way – something for which, of course, she has form – permanently perky nipples will be, err, big this winter, whatever the temperature. Announcing to her 364 million Instagram followers the launch of her “Ultimate Nip†ultimate ple Bra” from her shapewear line Skims in October, she took the opportunity to model the bra herself (34C if you were wondering). It features special moulded “nipples”, giving two distinct points to the female form.

The video shows the 43-year-old faux-tapping away at a computer, Business Barbie style, before standing up to jab a projector screen featuring an illustration of how the bra works with a wooden pointer in some kind of soft-porn schoolteacher roleplay.

“I’m introducing a brand new bra with a built-in nipple, so no matter how hot it is, you’ll always look cold,” she says breathily. “Some days are hard, but these nipples are harder.” She also manages to incorporate a reference to the climate crisis: “Unlike the icebergs, these... [she pauses to admire her rock-hard nips] aren’t going anywhere.”

“Is this a joke?” asked a number of women, horrified at the thought of their nipples being the main focus of a work presentation. But it’s no joke, apparently: Kim’s lightweight moulded-foam bra went on sale a couple of months back, in her signature palette of skin tones and onyx black, at a price of £53. Skims said it is making a “one-time donation” of 10 per cent of sales from the bra to environmental organisation One Percent for the Planet.

For breast cancer survivors, this is indeed no joke, but finally an easy, comfortable, confidence-boosting solution to post-mastectomy nipple loss – though it’s highly unlikely that KK had these people in mind. Meanwhile, her acolytes (in their millions) will be busting out this look simply because she is. But is it a hard “No” from the rest of us to the power nipple? Or could this be another milestone in the bra’s political history, along with Marilyn’s 1950s bullet boobs, Farrah Fawcett’s natural 1970s look, and the “Hello, boys” Wonderbra of the 1990s?

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Throughout history, bra politics have essentially wobbled between serving the male gaze and women’s choice to be as saggy or as sculpted as they like. Has Kardashian freed the nipple with this game-changing piece of underwear, or has she simply objectified it?

According to fashion historian Dr Kate Strasdin, the first major shapewear shift of the last century struck in the 1920s, when women ditched their structural undergarments for flapperesque flat chests, even wearing early bust binders in order to appear androgynous – women’s choice 1; male gaze 0. But by the 1950s, with Dior’s “New Look”, the restrictive Victorian hourglass silhouette was back, with “a focus on breasts”, she says. Meanwhile, Monroe’s “hyper-feminised” chest jutting from its spiral-stitched bullet bra – “all nicely covered up with knitwear” – was, Strasdin explains, a way of circumventing Hollywood’s restrictions around sexualisation and flesh on show.

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Although there wasn’t actually that much bra-burning in the 1960s, according to Strasdin, it was enough to lead to the bra’s deconstruction in the 1970s, which brought in a more natural-looking, soft triangle iteration, built for comfort, not for cleavage. When, in the 1980s, Madonna brought sexiness back to bras, with black lace, corsetry, and underwear worn as outerwear, it went without saying – because we’re talking about Madonna – that this was a feminist act. And of course, she reinvented the bullet bra, wearing Jean Paul Gaultier’s cone bra for her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour.

The ladette culture, exemplified by Eva Herzigova’s come-hither eyes and push-up bra of the 1990s, saw more of a tension between the male gaze and women’s choice. However, says Strasdin, “At the time, women would say they were absolutely in control of their own decisions. But lots of those women in the public eye at the time are looking back now and saying, ‘Of course we were being exploited.’ It’s that manipulative marketing making you feel that it’s free will.”

If the Wonderbra felt manipulative, then the cultural phenomenon of Victoria’s Secret lingerie in the late 1990s and 2000s hit like a sledgehammer, thanks to the long reign of its glamazon Angels, those improbably leggy models gracing every magazine cover, telling the rest of us what to do in order to look like them. And yet, ultimately, it became apparent that it was misogynistic middle-aged men that ruled here.

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The cancellation of Victoria’s Secret heralded the return of 1970s boobs in the 2010s, with Vogue even declaring the “death of the cleavage” in 2016. So when the pandemic struck in 2020, we were ready for the irrelevance of the male gaze, and the imperative of our own comfort, and more of us went braless than ever before... only to emerge, it seems, post-lockdown, totally up for getting it all out. Bodycon dresses printed with bare boobs started trending – the more attention the better, went the thinking.

Which brings us to 2023 and KK’s nipple bra – is this for the male gaze, or women taking back control? According to the Skims website, the point is that this new underwear gives women a “braless look”. It also promises a “sexy, natural-looking lift; the perfect fullness”. But, let’s face it, this is the braless look of someone with implants. When your body is sculpted to within an inch of its life by the undergarments you are wearing, there is nothing freeing about it.

“Everything Kim does is about objectification,” says Strasdin. “The idea that it’s about some kind of feminist liberation is very suspect.” After all, do we genuinely always want our nipples to look cold, or is it that men prefer to see erect nipples rather than flaccid ones? There’s a comment on KK’s Instagram post that perhaps sums it up: “Husband asked if they make permanent boner shorts too.” Come on, Kim – fair’s fair.