Unbound: The Invention of the Sports Bra
How One Garment Changed Women's Sports Forever

About this book:

In the summer of 1977, the running boom was sweeping America—but for millions of women, every stride was an exercise in pain and humiliation. With no athletic bras on the market, female runners were forced to choose between flimsy lace that offered zero support and rigid, wired contraptions that drew blood. *Unbound* tells the thrilling, untold story of how three visionary women—Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith, and Hinda Schreiber—refused to accept the status quo. Working from a Vermont basement, they stitched two jockstraps together, sparking a quiet revolution that dismantled a physical barrier to entry and unlocked the athletic potential of half the world’s population.

This is more than a history of a garment; it is a biography of a cultural earthquake. *Unbound* takes you behind the scenes of a male-dominated sporting goods industry that dismissed women’s needs, revealing how a grassroots, mail-order operation outmaneuvered corporate giants to create a billion-dollar activewear category. From the biomechanics of the "figure-eight" bounce to the boardrooms where male executives squirmed at the mention of female anatomy, the book exposes how the invention of the Jogbra rewrote the rules of retail, paved the way for modern athleisure, and forced the world to view the female body not as an object to be constrained, but as an instrument of power.

With vivid narrative drive, *Unbound* traces the garment’s journey from a DIY prototype to Brandi Chastain’s iconic World Cup celebration and a permanent place in the Smithsonian. It is an inspiring testament to what happens when necessity meets ingenuity: a simple piece of elastic and fabric became a tool of liberation, freeing generations of women to move, compete, and occupy public space without apology. For anyone who has ever laced up a pair of sneakers, this is the origin story of the gear that made it possible.