Researchers hope it could be an innovative solution to stress-induced eating, which is a potential contributor to the nation’s obesity epidemic. Their research on the subject, as well as their design for the new bra, is laid out in a new paper entitled “Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating.”
“It’s mostly women who are emotional over-eaters, and it turns out that a bra is perfect for measuring EKG (electrocardiogram),” Mary Czerwinski, one of the senior researchers at Microsoft, told Discovery News. Czerwinski explained that her team tried to develop an underwear version for men, but it didn’t end up working because underwear is located too far away from the heart.
Even if researchers didn’t intend to make a female-specific product, however, any move to mass market a “diet bra” would certainly have gendered implications. Our society is saturated with images depicting an unrealistic standard of female beauty, and the media is often an active participant in shaming women for their weight. Although tackling the obesity epidemic is a critical issue in the U.S., efforts to address it have been fraught with negative messages about heavier bodies. Public health campaigns in this area often rely on fat-shaming, even though that’s actually an ineffective strategy to get people to lose weight. It’s perhaps no surprise that U.S. girls are developing body issues at increasingly younger ages.