At 67 She Couldn’t Hook Her Bra, So She Made This Tank. Here Are the 7 Reasons Women Over 70 Wear It Instead of a Bra

🪞 The One That Surprised Me

REASON 1: IT SHAPES YOU BETTER THAN SHAPEWEAR, BECAUSE NO BAND CUTS YOU IN HALF

I made my tank so it would stop hurting. I never thought about the mirror. My friends did. “Susie, you look different,” they kept telling me.

A bra squeezes you with a tight band and hangs you from two thin straps. You get a shelf where the band sits and a bulge right under it. Your blouse hangs off you like a sack.

The Susie’s Built-in Bra Comfort Tank has no band. Its molded cups shape you in front, and the long, snug body runs smooth from under your arms to past your waist. It won’t hoist you up like a push-up bra, but it holds you where you belong.

I spent a fortune on shapewear that squeezed me like a tube of toothpaste. This does more, and I can breathe.

Patricia R. put it this way: “Look at the lift. No wire doing that, just the tank. I look ten years younger from the side and nothing digs in.”

📸 She Hid Her Back In Every Photo For 20 Years

REASON 2: THAT ROLL ON YOUR BACK WAS NEVER FAT. IT WAS THE BAND.

So many women hate the bulge across their upper back. It shows up in every wedding picture, and they blame their weight.

That roll comes from the band. A strip of tight elastic presses into soft skin and pushes it up and over itself. Take the band away and the roll goes with it. Same body, same weight.

That was my third spot. The line around my ribs. At bedtime it was still pressed into my skin, the way a sock leaves a line on your ankle. I never saw what it did to my back, because it was behind me.

My tank has no band. Nothing presses into your back, so nothing gets pushed up.

Darlene is 72. She wrote to me about trying on a fitted blouse over the tank and turning around in the store’s three-way mirror.

“Same me,” she wrote. “The roll just wasn’t there anymore.”

🦴 My Three Spots, Explained

REASON 3: IT HOLDS A 42DDD BETTER THAN UNDERWIRE, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T HANG YOU FROM THREE SPOTS

Every bra in my pile was built the same way. Hang the whole weight of your chest from two thin straps, then tie it down with one band. I call it the three-spot design.

The heavier your chest, the deeper those three spots dig, and the harder they pull your shoulders down and forward.

Your chest doesn’t get any lighter at lunch, and I was done hanging mine from three spots. In my tank, the molded cups, the wide flat straps and the long, snug body each carry a piece, so no one spot takes it all.

June is 71 and wears a 42DDD. She plays cards with me on Tuesdays and swore it would never hold her. Then she served a whole church supper in it, three hours on her feet. “Never hiked a strap once.”

My first try had floating cups. One Sunday in church, a pad ended up by my collarbone. So now the cups are molded and built in.

📏 I Wear An XL Myself

REASON 4: THERE’S NO BRA MATH, BECAUSE YOU START WITH YOUR SHIRT SIZE. A WRONG SIZE IS FIXED FREE.

Years ago, a lady at a department store put a tape measure around me and said I’d worn the wrong size my whole life. I bought two in the new size. Two weeks later, I had the same three spots.

I’m not the only one. Fitting surveys keep finding that about 8 in 10 women wear the wrong bra size.

I threw out the bra math. You start with your shirt size, then check the chart. There’s no band number and no cup letter. It runs from S to 6XL, and I wear an XL myself.

Still get it wrong? There’s our 90-Day Perfect Fit Guarantee. Size not right? Tell us within 90 days, and we ship you the right size free. It’s a simple size exchange.

Gail is 70 and was between two sizes. The bigger one felt roomy, so she told us, and we shipped her the smaller size free.

“Nobody measured me,” she wrote. “It just fit.”

🕒 My Friend Called Me First Thing In The Morning

REASON 5: NO MORE COUNTING THE HOURS UNTIL YOUR BRA COMES OFF

Ask a woman what time her bra starts to wear her out, and she’ll give you a number. Usually it’s about 3 o’clock. Mine was.

That’s the three spots again. From the minute you hook it on, two thin straps and one band hold up the whole load, hour after hour. The band feels tighter every hour you sit. By afternoon you’re counting down to taking it off. Some of us reach up under our blouse in the car to undo it.

My tank has no band and no wire, and its straps are wide and flat. The whole tank does the holding, a little bit everywhere, so nothing gets tighter as the day goes on.

The first women to wear my finished tanks were my friends from Tuesday cards. A few days in, one of them called me first thing in the morning.

“Susie, I did the whole grocery run in it and forgot I had it on.”

☀️ Why So Many Women Quit Bras In June

REASON 6: NO DAMP LINE UNDER YOUR CHEST IN JULY, BECAUSE THERE’S NO BAND TO SWEAT UNDER

Ask women when they gave up their bra, and a lot of them say it was summer.

That’s the band. It holds tight elastic around your ribs for 12 hours. On a hot afternoon it’s a damp line you peel off your skin, and it’s still red at bedtime.

But going without has its own trouble. Some of my friends quit for the summer, then wore a cardigan all through July, just in case somebody came to the door.

I wanted the hold without the band, so there’s no band at all, not even a soft one. Nothing wraps around your ribs, and the tank still holds you.

Faye is 74 and lives outside Phoenix. “I won’t lie, it’s not like wearing nothing in August,” she wrote to me. “But the band was always the worst of it. That wet line under my chest is gone.”

🪝 Where My Whole Tank Started

REASON 7: THERE’S NOTHING TO HOOK, BECAUSE IT PULLS ON OVER YOUR HEAD

This is the reason I made the tank at all.

A bra hooks in the middle of your back, where you can’t see. That’s easy at 30. It’s hard with stiff fingers or a shoulder that won’t bend back. The CDC says nearly half of Americans 65 and older have arthritis.

For years I hooked mine in front of my stomach, spun it around and wiggled into the straps.

I made one rule I would not break: nothing behind my back. No hooks, no clasp, no wire. If I could pull on a T-shirt, I had to be able to pull this on.

It goes over your head, then one arm, then the other. Tug it down over your hips and tuck it in. No reaching, no spinning, and you’re done in seconds.

Pat is 75. She timed herself the first morning and wrote to tell me: eleven seconds.

WHAT ALL SEVEN HAVE IN COMMON

If you read all seven, you saw the same few parts come up again and again: two thin straps, a tight band, a wire and the hooks behind your back.

The shelf in the mirror, the roll on your back, the stoop, the 3 o’clock countdown, the damp line in July and the morning spin all trace back to the same three spots.

Going without fixes the hooks, but then nothing holds you. We needed both at once: nothing to fasten, and something that holds us with the weight spread out. That’s the tank I made.

More than 50,000 women have ordered it, and it has over 10,000 verified reviews.

🛏️ What I Saw On The Bed

IT WAS NEVER YOUR BODY. IT WAS THE DESIGN.

Here’s the part I still get teary about.

I stopped counting the bras on that bed at twenty. There was the one from the fitting, the wireless one, the front-closing one and the sports bra. They came from different stores, in different sizes, with different promises on the box. And every one hurt me in the same three spots.

For fifty years I thought it was my shoulders, or my chest, or my skin. But if twenty bras from twenty stores all hurt me in the same three spots, it was never my body.

The three-spot design was drawn for a young woman. Our bodies changed, and nobody went back and redrew it for us.

That night, folding laundry at the kitchen table, I held up an old stretchy tank. A tank touches you everywhere: shoulders, sides, back, all the way past your waist. It doesn’t hang from anything.

What if the tank did the holding? Then nothing would hang from three spots at all.

If your drawer looks like mine, it was never you either.

WHAT WOMEN WHO WEAR IT TELL ME

I read more of my reviews than my family thinks is healthy. Here are a few, in the women’s own words. You’ll see Linda and Susan again on our page, with their before and after pictures.

THE QUESTIONS WOMEN ASK ME FIRST

I still answer a lot of my own mail. These are the things women ask me most, with my answers.

“I already stopped wearing a bra. Why would I go back?”

You wouldn’t be going back. There are no hooks or band, and nothing to reach behind you for. It’s a tank top you pull on over your head. You get held again without the part that made you quit.

“What size do I get?”

Start with your shirt size, then check the chart. There’s no band number and no cup letter. It comes in S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL and 6XL, in 8 colors. The size chart is right above the sizes on our page. I wear an XL myself.

“Will it show under my blouse?”

It looks like a plain tank top. The cups are molded and built into the front, and the straps lie flat, so there are no hooks or bumps showing through the back.

“Can I put it on with a bad shoulder or stiff hands?”

Yes. Sit on the edge of the bed, put it over your head first, then your good arm, then the other one. There is nothing to fasten.

“Will it ride up?”

Not if you tuck it in. It’s cut long so it tucks into your slacks and stays down. Untucked, it can creep up when you bend over.

“How do I wash it?”

Wash it on gentle, in cold water. Lay it flat to dry, or tumble dry on low. The cups are built in, so you just wash it as is.

“What if I get the size wrong?”

Tell us within 90 days, and we’ll ship you the right size free. It’s a size exchange, not a refund.

I DID THE MATH ONE NIGHT

The night my first good tank was done, I went back to that pile on my bed and counted again. More than twenty bras, and only two of them ever got worn every day. I bought each of the others to fix the one before it, and most of them I wore once.

Then I did the other math. Most women need three: one to wear, one in the wash and one saved for Sunday. That’s what I keep in my own drawer now. Some nights I forget to take mine off and sleep in it.

Right now we’re running our Fall Sale. The tank is marked down, and it’s Buy 2, Get 1 Free on top of that, so the third one costs you nothing. If you want five, it’s Buy 3, Get 2 Free. Shipping is free in the US, it ships the next day, and you can mix the colors any way you like.

The sale won’t run forever, and the popular sizes go first. If your size is in stock today, that’s when I’d get it.

On our page it’s called the Comfort Shaper Tank. Don’t let the word “shaper” put you off. It isn’t tight like a girdle, and it’s the same tank I made at my kitchen table.

⚠️ Copycats Even Took My Photos

WHY YOU WON’T FIND IT ON AMAZON

I need to warn you about something that already happened to some of the women who write to me.

Susie’s is only sold on susies.co. It isn’t on Amazon or Walmart, and it isn’t in stores.

Copycat sites have copied the look, and some even took my own photos. What shows up in the mail is a thin shelf cami with two loose pads, the same floating cups I spent months getting rid of.

Helen is 75. She ordered a look-alike on Amazon first. The pads slid sideways after one wash, and she was right back in her old bra.

So get it from susies.co. That’s the only place our 90-Day Perfect Fit Guarantee and the Buy 2, Get 1 Free apply.

THE WAY I SEE IT NOW

You can close this page and keep going the way you are. Tomorrow morning you hook it in front, spin it around and fight your way into the straps. You count the hours until you can take it off. Or you leave the bra in the drawer and keep a sweater by the door.

I did that for years. I know exactly how it goes.

Or you can do what Darlene, June, Gail, Faye and Pat did. Pull this on over your head, tuck it in and go about your day. If the size is wrong, we send you the right one free.

All I wanted was to stop hurting. More than 50,000 women later, I still tell everyone the same thing: it was never your body. It was the three spots.

Susie

P.S.

I kept one bra from that pile. Not to wear. It hangs on a hook on the back of my closet door, so every morning, when I pull my tank over my head, I remember what I used to put up with.

P.P.S. If you’ve been hooking yours in front and spinning it around, you don’t have to do it tomorrow morning. Start with your shirt size. If it’s wrong, tell us within 90 days and we ship you the right size free.

Fall Sale: Buy 2, Get 1 Free. Free US shipping. 90-Day Perfect Fit Guarantee.