HERS Breast Cancer Foundation :: Bras for Body & Soul

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The HERS Breast Cancer Foundation, a 501(c)(3) a non-profit organization, provides programs and services supporting the needs of women and families affected by breast cancer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bras for Body & Soul is a specialty bra shop and extended services for all women, including women who have had breast surgery, in order to make a positive difference in women's lives.

News >> A proper fit with spirituality; Ex-nun sells bras for body and soul

by Kristin Butler, Staff Writer
The Fremont, Newark, Union City Argus, Sunday, May 5, 1996

FREMONT--At first glance, Tricia McMahon seems to have lived an incongruous life--she's a former nun who now sells lingerie in Fremont.

But a closer look reveals a woman who has searched for a way to combine spirituality with physicality and has tried to create wellness for herself and others.

It's a journey that has led the 42-year-old Fremont native from studying public health to serving as a Franciscan sister to leading spiritual retreats. Last year, it led her to start a clothing business, Bras for Body and Soul. Tucked in the back of a friend's consignment clothing store, McMahon works out of a tiny room filled with dressers, books, masks, mirrors and mannequins.

Her job is to help women find comfort, health and self-esteem through what she calls a quality product and a personal touch, and she considers the undertaking more of a ministry than a money-making enterprise.

"The business hooked into my interests about women's health--body and soul," she said.

McMahon remembers grappling with her own body and soul as a young woman growing up in Fremont. "Growing up Catholic, I had a sense of the unworthiness of being a human being and the shame of my body," she said.

The daughter of a doctor, McMahon decided to study public health at San Jose State University. After graduation, she worked at various jobs, but never felt what she did had meaning or purpose, she said.

At age 33, McMahon moved to Minnesota and entered religious life for six years.

"I found the deeper side of myself and what it means to be a woman of faith," she said. "But finding my deeper side, I found I needed my sacred and secular--body and soul.

During those years, she earned a masters degree in theology and explored this conflict by writing a thesis on spirituality and sexuality.

"I wanted my spirituality to be grounded into my real, everyday experience." One way to do this, she said, was to know the blessing of her body.

After leaving religious life, she continued to explore God's place in the physical,she said, through liturgical dance and massage therapy. She also offered workshops and retreats for people trying reclaim the connection of the spiritual and the physical in themselves.

This year, she served as a minister and taught several classes at Notre Dame High School for girls in San Jose and began her bra business.

The business grew from her interest in helping women who have undergone breast surgery. After training for several days in Minnesota, she realized all women could benefit from receiving support during their often frustrating quest for the right bra.

"Watching the transformation of fitting a female in a bra was transforming for me," she said. "Most women stand there with shoulders drooping, but when they found the right bra, their shoulders went back in relief and self-regard."

McMahon's goal is to give that experience to every woman she fits. The bras that fill her shop may not vary much in color or style, but they do come in 300 different sizes.

She works with clients one-to-one and spends anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour helping them find the right fit.

Her first concern is teaching women how to stay healthy. For instance, most bras are cut straight around the bottom, but the bras she sells (which she orders from Colesce Couture) are cut on a curve so they don't "ride up" in back.

"It is cut to be high in front and low in the back so it gives you support in your lower part of your back, where you want it," she said.

A crucial feature, she said, is how the bra is designed to support the breast. "No underwires," she emphasized. "They tend to inhibit circulation around the breast and dig into you."

Not only has she seen women suffer from bruises, chaffing and mild deformity from underwire bras, McMahon also emphasizes that an underwire doesn't provide real support. "It provides the illusion (of providing support) because it feels so tight and hurts, but logic tells you (that something) that small can't support an entire breast)."

The bras she sells use nylon instead of elastic for straps, and the breast is supported by a triangular flap in front and a strip of strong material called a "support collar" underneath. It helps eliminate back pain and bruises, and may also have an effect on preventing breast cancer, she said.

A study described in "Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, " by Sydney Ross Singer and Sonia Grismaijer suggests bras might lead to breast cancer.

It pointed out that lymph nodes on and surrounding the breasts should be unconstricted so they can flush out toxins, but poor circulation caused by tourniquet effect of some bras could contribute to the growing numbers of breast cancer, which now strikes one in four women.

In light of this, McMahon also teaches self-breast examination and counsels clients to have an annual mammogram while helping them find the right bra.

She also works on improving self-esteem by trying to teach clients not to copy the pushed-up, smashed-together look they see on magazine covers and movie screens.

"We are so used to what is unnatural we don't know what is natural anymore," she said.

The natural look--where the apex of the breast is midway between the shoulder and the elbow and breasts are apart, rather than pushed--is the most attractive look, she said.

Client Diane Sjogren, 43, feels she is proof of this claim. For years she struggled to find a bra that fit her larger rib cage and full figure but often was forced to take home bras that were cut too big, were too tight and "rode up" in back.

She said the bras she bought from McMahon made her feel more comfortable, and even though the styles were limited and somewhat "matronly," she still felt more attractive.

McMahon is practiced at helping women of any size feel positive about their bodies, but she is still learning how to help fit women who have undergone breast surgery and mastectomies. Chicki Downs, a 77-year-old woman who has been fitting bras in San Jose for more than 40 years, is her mentor.

"A woman wants to "look like she is all natural, so I fit her with a prosthesis to give her complete confidence," Downs said.

But fitting a woman is only part of the service. Downs survived cervical cancer and has empathy for what breast cancer victims go through.

"A lot of these women haven't looked at themselves in the mirror since surgery," she said. She offers support to these women as they reclaim their bodies and their femininity, and often spends hours with clients, letting them cry on her shoulder and accept her "tender, loving care." McMahon plans to do the same.

"Women don't tend to cherish any part of their body," she said. "I'm hoping each woman who comes to me leaves here somehow knowing the blessing of their body."