Have you seen what’s out there?
To start off my journey to make the perfect chest protector, I did a bunch of market research.
….
I was not happy with what I found. Honestly it looks like there isn’t great chest protection for people with breasts in ANY contact sport. Granted I didn’t talk to any woman outside of fencing, but still. It gave me an idea of where the market was.
Your options are
Boob plate with holes drilled into it
Whatever the f*** this is
I’m really not sure what’s going on there but it looks like the manufacturer had extra jock cups and was like “oh yeah these are kind of shaped like boobs, let’s re-use these.”
Ultimately, this gave me a SUPER good place to start for designing a better chest protector for people with breasts.
But first, to address a couple of common questions:
But Veronica, boob armor works just fine! I know a bunch of people that use it and don’t have problems.
Okay cool — Have you actually asked them about their chest protection and actually listened to what their issues are with it?
Boob armor DOESN’T work for a good percentage of the population. If you are the size that fits inside that protector, it works okay! If you are bigger or smaller than that “one size fits all” boob plate, you’re out of luck.
Additionally — People with boobs aren’t jumping into fencing without wearing a bra of some kind (If you do, honestly more power to you!) The addition of a sports bra means that WE STOP HAVING INDIVIDUAL BOOBS AND ITS JUST ONE CURVY SURFACE. So if you try to put boob chest protection on top of that, it just sticks out and doesn’t do what the intention was.
Lastly — the curved surface can sometimes draw thrusts into the sternum area of the chest. Ideally the chest protector should be distributing force across the entire chest, not pinpointing in the one place its trying to protect.
How has this not been solved before? It seems like every person with breasts that I know complains about it.
Yeah that’s absolutely true. This has been an issue for as long as people with breasts have been fencing. It doesn’t matter how much we shout, gear manufacturers don’t listen. I’m not entirely sure why they don’t but it hasn’t been fixed. So that’s where I went:
Historically Inspired
I first started looking at historical armor. How did they handle the articulation in the chest?
Looking at the images above (just ones I pulled from the internet, I looked at more than just this), the common shape for a breast plate was one that gave the arms a LOT of mobility. Partially because you would also wear chainmail underneath, but also that the pauldrons would cover the exposed armpit area so the breastplate could allow for more arm movement.
It was this principle of design that pushed me forward into the design you see today!
